Page 37 of Deadly Maiden (Dragons and Darkthings #1)

Wyntre

Here we stand before Slaedorth Fortress, a dread place created by necromancers, and likely few fae would dare to trespass upon. A least, I’m guessing that is so? Even my parents thought it wasn’t a great holiday shack. Sad, that it has taken this grievously violent day to bring me here.

We have overflown the tower the king placed here, decades ago, to observe the fortress. There was a flurry of movement around it, and I have no doubt we were spotted. If I wait too long, we will have bad company.

I can appreciate why the king has not conquered Slaedorth. It dominates and nestles into a rugged mountain like a dam holding back…something hideous. The walls are monstrously high and constructed of a variable black-to-gray material. It is not dead or darkthing matter—I would feel that. However, what is strewn over the final few hundred yards before the wall is indeed the dead. Skeletons, rotted clothes and armor—the bodies have turned into compost, dried flesh, and dust. There is no odor, but I can imagine this place after this happened, and one would have needed a mask to get past without gagging.

There must be more than a thousand dead.

Some are partially buried, many are dismembered. Arm bones stretch before splayed bodies as if they strived to grab something. A few have died collapsing against equally deceased trees. Some partial skeletons in rags are wedged into ladders propped against the wall, left partway up, like butterflies on a tilted display tray. Time has made them fall apart. Hundreds of weathered arrows and spears protrude from the earth like spines on a porcupine. Almost none are lodged in the bodies.

Were they aimed at something else?

Nothing lives here, unless one counts ants, birds, and beetles.

“We should count those,” I murmur.

“What?” Rorsyd asks, rumbling beside my ear. Yards behind, his tail lashes, rasping across the dry spindlegrass.

“Nothing. Just musing over whether anything lives here.”

“It is quite a scene of…devastation. I did mention the rumors. I wonder what did this? The arrows are plentiful. There are a few severed limbs.” With his claws, he rakes at a nearby arm and backbone connected to a skull.

“I think know what killed them.” I whisper that because I am a little…just a little, afraid.

The undead are calling me.

Should I try what my thoughts implore me to do?

A tremor ripples through me, from toes to spine to mind, simmering upward from the ground upon which we stand, a rustling, a susurration that enters my ears without needing to be heard.

“You do?” He twists his neck. “Damn. The Aos Sin from the tower are coming. In large numbers. I can see the dust cloud from the hooves. They’re riding fast.” A new thunder rumbles the ground. “I might be able to flame them, but I am weakened. I’ve spent too long like this.”

Now he tells me? We are stretched thin, using our abilities to the very edge of sanity.

But there is no point in regrets.

My question is answered. We need help. Just…how can I know if I can control them? Trial and error is easy to say, harder when error means being dragged underground and held there while you scream and scream and suck dirt into your lungs.

My imagination needs killing, if nothing else.

I draw a deep breath, hold it, and shut my eyes. Gheist. It’s everywhere. Not as a solid, clustered-together identity. Most of the ghosts are barely here, yet every atom of air jostles against particles of gheist. We are breathing the stuff.

To me, a necromancer, this is raw, unadulterated power.

I lift my right hand, palm up, as if holding something weighty, and I push higher, higher until my hand is at neck level. The effort is making my bones creak, my eyeballs feel ready to pop. The seconds pass, and I breathe, and I begin to be sure this is working. I feel a disturbance in the earth, a widespread movement across the expanse before me. Long-forgotten bones shift aside the soil and seek to rise, to once more find the warm sunlight that bathes the living world.

Flesh and blood and a pumping heart?

Who needs those when you have these .

My deathly people.

My parents’ forgotten, derelict, but powerful army.

A bead of sweat dribbles down my forehead. This is difficult, new, and scary. It’s pulling some part of me into the utmost exertion—my heart beats faster, louder, my head feels the pressure. It’s also, strangely, a relief to be able to do something after flying here with only my father’s death to contemplate.

I need this.

I want this. This is my birthright!

I shove my palm higher, my arm shakes from the load. Dark tenuous smoke issues from my fingers. I am bringing into the light a thousand, newborn, undead warriors.

Well, I suppose newborn is pushing it?

Re-born warriors.

We left Andacc behind to sort out the logistics of his war, so there is only Rorsyd, still a dragon, myself, and Kyvin. Shoulder to shoulder, we three stare at the ten-story-high gate.

The soil across the entire expanse between us and that gate is jiggling.

It appears as if Rorsyd has missed that. Poking him with my elbow is probably a bad idea. “Do you think the key will work in that gate?”

To my left, the first of the undead cracks the soil and shoves his bony arm into the light, wriggles his fingers.

Done. My vision blurs for a few seconds, wobbles, then shrinks back down into crispness.

Impressive, if I do say so myself.

“I don’t know. I can fly us above the wall but who knows what is in there. I was rather more hoping the key would deter those.” He lifts one mighty leg and points with his shiny black claws at where several hundred undead are dragging themselves from their burrows after, probably, fifteen years of sleep.

In that instant, I know that I have succeeded. And who is their mistress.

“Oh, them? Those are now mine.” I smile at my dragon mate, hold my arms out with my fingers reversed and laced, stretching them until they almost crack.

“Them?” If he still had eyebrows Rorsyd would be raising one. “You own them?”

“ Mmm-hmmm .”

“ If I was into spanking my female mate, and in man form, you would be getting one. There is still a problem. The arrows everywhere hint at our fate if they start shooting. They , meaning our pursuers.”

A glance over my shoulder reveals a troop of thirty or forty cavalry approaching. “True. Let’s walk fast.”

Kyvin lurches forward, joining us as we advance. He shows no signs of recognizing that his relatives are at his feet and climbing from the earth.

“Don’t squash them, please,” I tell Rorsyd. “I could feel them under the soil, waiting for someone to command them.”

“ Huh .” He turns his head, looking backward. “Probably for the best. The Aos Sin are lining up as if to charge.”

“Would they have the courage though? It looks as if the king has left Slaedorth alone for ten years or more, after trying to enter in force and losing all these men.”

“Let’s not find out.”

“Once we get through the gate, we should be safe.”

The gate. I study the structure as we weave our meandering path toward it, dodging the emerging undead. Clods of dirt roll off their bodies. Most are dressed in rags, for the soil has hastened the rotting of the cloth. A few lodged arrows rattle or crack within the architecture of their skeletons.

Those who remained on the surface do not move. They cannot be raised. And I can actually sense the difference between them. My parents commanded the others, the raised, to bury themselves. Were these surface corpses surplus? More than they needed? Perhaps.

I have a rule to add to my own necromancer notebook.

Rule One: To raise an undead and make it stable one must, clearly, do it within a certain time frame.

Like Landos. My stomach lurches, and I swallow, twist my mouth. No. No. No. Not going there. It would be the most horrific sacrilege to even try.

Yet…all of these undead had families. That’s bitter food for thought.

When we are closer to the gate, it’s obvious that it has a proper keyhole at head-height. A black-as-sin keyhole. “What do I do?”

“Stick it in?” Rorsyd suggests. “With both hands.”

Wondering why he is specific but suspecting he is following some instructions passed down through the years since the battle, I do as he says. “And?”

“Turn it, then maybe lick it with your hot little tongue, and blow on it?”

I eyeroll. “Dirty dragon.”

“You started this.”

I have a sudden inclination to cover Kyvin’s ears so as not to corrupt him. He is, however, oblivious to flirtatious talk. Our behavior is ridiculous, considering what is behind us. I think both Rorsyd and I are exhausted, and sick of catering to fear. At least we are for today.

Tomorrow may be different.

“And we’d better pray this works.” I turn the key.

A series of precise clicks sounds, and within the structure something shakes, then the gate grinds open.

This ten-story-high gate moves at the turning of a small key, each wing creaking inward.

My footing seems to quiver, my balance shifts, and I take a tiny step to the side, having to concentrate to restore my sight to normal. Rorsyd eyes me, and I shrug. Raising the undead took energy despite the overabundance of gheist.

I crane my neck to watch the entire clifflike height of this monstrous gate swing open.

“I am impressed beyond words.” It clunks to a halt when the wings are at right angles to the wall.

Rorsyd stomps in. “Hurry. You look better without arrows in your back.”

When we are clear of the arc of each section, the gate slowly closes behind us. I barely notice the clang. Luckily, there is room for a dragon in here, but barely that. The space behind the walls is shadowed by an overhead lattice that connects the wall to the mountain. The dark lattice reminds me a ribcage, for it is fashioned from curved pieces connected by sinuous struts.

A slim silver door, etched with markings, leads further into the fortress.

“You are not going to fit in there.”

Rorsyd scratches at the stony ground then snorts like a disgruntled stallion. “No. I will not. You’re not going in there without me.”

“Which leaves only one possibility. You’ll have to shift back.”

“Yes. I’ll not leave to visit Orish until I’m certain you’ll be safe.”

I close my eyes, assessing my strength. “Okay. But after raising those guys.” I thumb backward in the direction of the undead. “I won’t be able to heal you without some rest.”

“Fine.”

“That’s the dirtiest fine I’ve ever heard you say.”

He grins with a side-display of teeth and gives an embarrassed dragon-shrug. “I’m tired. You’re tired. Maybe we both need rest.”

Except I really want to explore Slaedorth. If I’m dead on my feet, so be it. Better than undead on my feet. “We go in there. And when you say stop, we will. Best if we eat and drink sometime soon too?”

Kyvin is toting the bag with provisions in one hand, and slung over his other shoulder are the rucksacks Rorsyd dropped when we landed. His strength shocked me when he picked those up.

“Wait.” Rorsyd stares into space. “Shifting in one, two?—”

Watching him do this in reverse is as impressive as when he turns from fae into a dragon. He becomes an impossible, slip-sliding confusion of shapes that seem to fit together like a hazy, shrinking jigsaw, until they lock into the finality that is Rorsyd, the man-fae.

One knee on the ground, fist planted beside it, his head down a shiver runs over his sweat-shiny, bare-assed naked skin. Those shoulders. That ass…

I grab my lip between my teeth.

I should not be thinking of how sexy he is, shut it down, and wait for him to get up and find some clothes. He dresses quickly, shoves his feet into his boots, straps on belt, sword, dagger, then straightens to his almost seven-feet height and stares down at me.

“Are you ready?” I’m echoing what he said recently, before we flew here, when my father was lying in the dirt nearby. I haul a shaky breath. Not now.

Maybe I am the one who is not ready?

Rorsyd sighs and rolls his head in a circle, moves his shoulders making audible cracks, grimaces. “I am. Just one last question. Can we trust those undead to stay out there and to hold off the Aos Sin?”

“The last part, yes. Will they stay out there? Also yes. Like I said, they are mine.”

“Good. Though it is taking me a moment to get used to you making them climb out of the earth like that, after they waited, like, fifteen years?” He frowns, rubs a hand over his sword hilt. “Okay. Let’s go find all the scary monsters in there.”

I go to him, raise myself on tiptoe, and cradle my hands on either side of his neck. We exchange a soft, slow kiss, and when our lips part, I sigh. “You feel so wonderful, so nice.” I press my face into his chest. “I needed this. My worries melt away when I’m with you.”

“Same here, my princess.” Princess? I smile and give it a pass. It’s better than my sweet necromancer. Gently, he circles the small of my back until I break the hug.

I should call him my lizard prince and see what happens.

“Now, I am ready.” The three of us advance, with Kyvin dragging the bag of provisions.

The etchings on the silver door resolve into something unexpected: a complex floral motif that unrolls across the surface. Here is another keyhole inside a raised silver rose. Beside the keyhole is a handle shaped like a rope made of twisting silver vines.

For a necromancer fortress made by my parents, I expected skulls and bones, if there was any prettiness at all. Maybe they were not who I imagined them? I look more closely at the multitude of etched flowers. There is a skull at the center of every flower. I grin at the discovery. Gotcha.

This place is where I may truly find out who my parents were. With Father newly dead, this day holds too many shocks.

I flourish the key with a shaking hand. “This key again? Maybe.” It cannot hurt…can it?

“Try it.” He places his hand around mine. Together, we insert it and the lock clicks. When I push on the handle, the door opens.

After a small entrance foyer, there’s a cross corridor to left and right and a long corridor that runs before us, higher than light can reach in a skinny rectangle shape that seems to stretch into forever. A few darker blotches to left and right hint at doorways to rooms. My first lungful of air reeks of dust, ancient mold, and of hundreds of dead.

Hundreds. Maybe thousands.

When I strain and concentrate down, sifting through the particles, I see that all of them actually utterly dead. And mostly they are insect corpses. And a few rats. My necromancer skills are flourishing in these surroundings.

Does this mean I might be able to, one day, raise undead spiders? I picture a horde of creepy crawlies overrunning a troop of enforcers, eating their eyes, sneaking into their ears, and worse. I shudder. I draw a line through that idea. Too far. Besides, I’d need big ones to do a thorough job.

There’s another idea. Breed some huge spiders.

I need to slap myself.

“We need light,” Rorsyd says. “Though my night vision is good, in here is darker than normal.” He turns to rummage in the bag Kyvin carries, searching. He pulls out a long cylinder with a quartz-like rectangle at the end. When he twists the cylinder, there is a snick and the quartz rectangle glows. The light is bright enough to make exploration possible.

“An etharum torch.” I shake my head. “Andacc is too organized.”

“That’s a good trait in a war leader. He also left a note in there. We should read it before I go. That is, if you still want me to go?”

Do I look dubious? Concerned? “I said you should. Could you hold my hand while we walk? Not that I’m scared.”

“Really?” His eyebrows lift. “I think I’d like you to have some weaknesses. After raising those guys, as you call them.”

I recall that he hates ghosts, and I smile, lace my fingers between his. “I have those. I think it’s that Slaedorth belonged to my parents.” I tilt back my head, following the drift of dust motes, and still I fail to find the ceiling. My hand, when I trail it along the wall, feels the rough gray stone. “I’m afraid of learning something and I don’t even know what it is. But I do want to learn.”

“Conflicted then.” He walks, pulls me with him, moving along the main corridor. “I’ll explore with you and kiss you better when needed. I can’t leave for hours anyway?”

It must be almost sunset. We will be camping in here. “How long does the torch last?”

“A day? And you will be able to recharge it.”

Of course I can.

We open doors as we go. The first is a closet. Then a kitchen. Then a large room with six tables, each with matching chairs. It’s all so ordinary, and I came here, I remind myself, to discover more about necromancy. Landos died yesterday, and my parents fought against the king who had him killed.

Maybe I’m as scared of not finding anything that can help in this coming war as much as I am afraid of finding out who Sabre and Aislinn really were when they weren’t fighting battles?

“A room full of desks and chairs?” Rorsyd closes the door. “Was that a schoolroom?”

“I think so.” I point to the sign above the door: STUDY ROOM .

The next room is a dormitory with eight beds, but none of them have mattresses, and the dust is thick. Spiders and their webs are rare in here, probably due to how the fortress has been sealed.

“It looks as if there was a school here. Do you think my parents lived here for long? Or was it just a myth, a?—”

“They told you it was a place for wars.”

“But was it always that? Or was it just how they saw Slaedorth?”

He wrenches open the next door. “A library?”

And there it is, an immense room filled with tall shelves of dusty books, reading tables, benches, and several desks. This is my goal. This is where I could surely learn about necromancy, if any of them ever wrote down a thought.

“It is promising, but let’s keep going, check three more, then we can sit down and eat.” I open the first, which leads into a bathroom? Stained mirror on the wall. Bathtub. Buckets. Towel rack.

The second door reveals a small, square room with levers on the wall. Labelled levers. I backtrack to read the sign attached to the door. Rorsyd has beat me to it and he swipes dust from the letters to make them legible.

“Power and Light Room.”

“So…” I re-enter the room and find the lever with a white sign above it. LIGHTS 1 . “Dare I?”

Rorsyd nods.

Gingerly, I crank the lever downward and light glows from a palm-sized circle high on the wall. And when I check the corridor, it also glows with spots of light.

“We may not need this.” He wiggles the etharum light.

“I wouldn’t want to be lost in here, in the dark. Who knows if this will last? These have to be etharum powered?”

“Or gheist. You should look for the source, Wyntre. It must be somewhere inside the fortress. It’s being piped to these lights.”

Another task to occupy me. What I really, really want to do is check the books in the library.

I thumb toward the four other levers. “Those are labelled Power and Lights two, three, and four. They can stay off, for now.”

“Sure.”

Third door is a huge room with altars? “Maybe they experimented on the dead here?”

“Or…” Rorsyd says, leaning past my ear. “A religion where they sacrificed cows for dinner? I’m hungry, by the way. It could be anything.”

Now I am curious. The corridor is almost at an end.

“We may as well keep going.” He hands me the etharum torch for added illumination.

I turn the next knob.

A bedroom with a large bed.

The door after the bedroom opens onto a…a nursery?

Throat closing in, I hold the torch just inside the door. There’s a crib. Tiny shadows float on the wall behind a dangling decoration with several little carved animals—deer, dragon, frogs, a skeleton. A memory flashes to me of watching a ceiling spin and little animals rotate above my head. I wonder if it came from here. I was just a baby. Surely too young to recall anything. Am I imagining this?

I shut the door before Rorsyd looks. “Nothing.” I stride onward.

Rorsyd checks the final side door. Inside is an armory with racks of weapons. Beside a nursery? Odd.

Spears, swords, axes. Did they arm the undead? Was the nursery an afterthought?

Slaedorth must have other storage rooms, but that early cross-corridor can wait.

This corridor’s end has a door set into it similar to the entrance door—silver, but this time it’s etched with animals. Eldritch animals with far too many teeth and tentacles. I love the wicked creepiness, and I trace the long, slanted teeth of a bloated fish.

Then I turn the handle and swing the silver door inward. A late thought comes to me: what if those animals are on the other side.

A torrent of wind rushes in, making me squint, making my hair swirl.

“What the…” Rorsyd says, clearly stunned.

So am I.

Three stone steps lead downward to a large valley that spreads before us, a verdant space surrounded by the Scarrock Mountains. Their jagged peaks stab the sky, and the valley is green and lush, with patches of forest and a river running through it that disappears somewhere beneath the fortress to our right. A flock of sheep grazes in a field. The opposite mountain is fogged by distance and low-lying clouds or mist.

“Let’s eat out here.” My skin tightens at the cool air and with mild gusts fluttering at my ears, I step down onto springy grass. Rorsyd joins me.

Nothing growls or jumps at us. Somewhere, a bird calls and bugs make clicking noises—all the more noticeable after the silence of the inside of Slaedorth. I smell blossoms and crushed grass and freshness. If there are dangers, I cannot sense them.

“It’s safe here,” I add quietly, with the utmost certainty.

“This is real?” He sounds puzzled, amazed.

“Uh-huh. The other side of these mountains must be unclimbable.” I contemplate their wild beauty, the curl of clouds tickling their summits, the sheerness and majesty of their slopes.

Maybe necromancy rendered them too frightening? That would be more plausible.

I’m gaining the notion that Slaedorth has more history than even Rorsyd knew about. It seems too complex to be something constructed by two people. Especially when I turn to look upon the rear and see at least three stories of windows opening in the rear wall.

Kyvin catches up with us, drops the bags, then sits on the lawn that rolls downhill to the field. I’ve never seen the look that’s on his face before. I try to place it then realize he never has any definite expression. He is the epitome of unflappable.

Because he is an undead, of course.

Now though? He looks contemplative.

Has he been here before? We assumed so and now, I’d say it’s a definite yes. The raven and Kyvin came from here. The letter said there was a secret needed to open the Slaedorth gates, as well as the key, yet I have opened them. Perhaps my raising of the undead was the other ingredient.

Kyvin will find you. He holds the key to something secret of value that is only found at Slaedorth. If you use him, be careful. Read what you find.

And Kyvin’s key is a copy of the one in my parents’ box. So many keys. My parents were into backing up their plans.

The compass must be another key? But to what? I rub my temple. My head is aching. Today has been awful—too much for me. Maybe for anyone.

I need, desperately, to push away the deaths and the fighting, the violence, the burning. I can still smell smoke on my hair. I need to wind down before I fall over.

Carefully, I sit next to Kyvin and Rorsyd and stretch out my legs, lean back on my hands.

I inhale this unexpected serenity. Clouds drift by. Sheep bleat and tug at the grass, chewing happily. A dragonfly dips across some sprawled yellow daisies. This feels like the end of a very long journey.

Or the beginning of one.

Soon the sun is setting and casting long purple shadows.

“Before I forget, before I leave, my last worrying question, Wyntre.”

“Hmmm?”

“Will you be okay with him, by yourself?” He indicates Kyvin with a slight jerk of his head.

“Absolutely. If anything, I think he will somehow be the key I need to unlock something here at Slaedorth. And I don’t mean the spare key that was around his neck. Just an idea I have.”

“Okay. Good. Be very careful. Remember that. And if I’m not back quickly, as in I may have to walk if my shifting develops a flaw…are you going to be able to hunt a sheep for dinner? The food Andacc gave us will last a week at most.”

A what? I know we eat them but… “A sheep?” My voice squeaks.

“You’ve never hunted? Knew it.”

“I will manage.”

“And there is my vicious little necromancer girl.”

“You mean princess,” I remind him. I cannot resist adding, “My sweet lizard prince.”

“What?” He tackles me to the grass and lies on top of me, pinning me beneath him while he bites my neck, tugs down my collar, and blows raspberries on the tops of my breasts.

We finally stop tussling, and he studies me, looking into my eyes. “You know, they’ve changed. You have fire in your eyes now, my soulmate princess.”

I nod, hair rustling on the grass as I gasp out, “I do. I found out…today.” I’m not saying how, and I’m sure my love for him is also shining from my eyes.

He smiles and draws his hand down the side of my face, gently thumbs my mouth. “My beautiful girl.”

I’m still breathing hard when he flops over to lie beside me. “Truly, though, be careful. I need you in my life forever.”

“Me too.” I elbow up so I can kiss his jaw. “Meaning you.”

It’s the best end to the day. Until I remember Father. Grief punches me. It will be a while before I stop doing this—flipping back into that awful moment. I know it. It will lessen. I sit up.

“Let’s get some food. Then we should sleep. By morning I will be okay to heal you.”

“Sleep. In Slaedorth. Probably better than out here? But I’ll need you to protect me in there.” He shudders. “Ghosts?”

I eyeroll at my brave soulmate and decide not to remind him of what Kyvin is.

“You know. Forget what I said. I’m not going anywhere tomorrow. Orish isn’t going to fault me, and I’d rather be with you when you explore this place. I want to know Slaedorth is safe before I leave.”

“That sounds wonderful.” I wriggle closer to him and exhale, long and low, sinking into just being…with him.