Page 33 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

Ten

The soldiers returned just before dusk.

When word of their arrival reached me, I ran out onto the wall-walk again to see them crowd through the gate. They rode triumphantly, and I quickly caught sight of Bryce Mandelian atop my Artaxian stallion at the head of the column.

The baron was sitting straight in the saddle, but the horse's flanks and legs were splattered with dark mud.

I met them at the stables, finding the baron in Etreyiu's stall, personally toweling him off.

When he saw me, the horse made a pleased sound and reached his head towards me.

I caught his muzzle between my hands and leaned my head against him. I'm glad you're okay, my friend, I thought, hoping he could somehow know my mind.

"This horse! Dear gods, princess, this horse is a wonder!" Baron Mandelian said as he saw me. "He fought harder and more skillfully than any warrior on the field."

"Who did you fight?" I asked and saw some of the awe flee from his eyes as though memory of the battle had just returned in full force.

He shook his head. "I cannot say, Aelia. I have never seen creatures nor beasts like that before."

My blood seemed to chill as I studied a fleck of that dark mud on Etreyiu's muzzle and considered that it might not be mud at all.

The baron stepped closer and lowered his voice.

"I don't know why I’m whispering. It will be all over the city within an hour.

They were not men, not elves, nothing I have ever encountered.

Their skin was gray as though rotted, and the stench from them was a horror.

They rode hellish beasts that looked like dogs but were the size of horses. "

My heart pounded as he continued. "There were only a hundred or so, and we would have been able to take them on our own, but the dragon riders came. They made it so that we did not lose a single man."

Io fought for my people, I realized. He had been on that field, and he had protected them.

"The prince tried to take one of them—to question him, but the foul creature ripped his own heart out of his chest rather than be captured," Bryce added with an incredulous shake of his head.

He studied me before adding, "Fates, Princess, I have terrified you."

I narrowed my eyes. "I would be an idiot to not be afraid, My Lord, but I need you to tell me everything. Did they speak the common tongue? What weapons did they use? Did they have any armor that would place their allegiance with Penjan?"

"Follow me," he said.

He led me out into the courtyard, where a wagon sat covered by a canvas tarp. The smell was horrible—rot and filth so bad that it gagged me. I noticed that the soldiers were all standing a fair distance back from it.

Bryce handed me a handkerchief, and I held it over my face as he pulled back the edge of the cloth, just enough so that I could see.

I turned away quickly. They were dead things, dead for more than just the hours since the battle. These creatures were rotting corpses.

"Necromancy," I said, taking several lurching steps away, trying to get a lungful of clean air.

"Dear gods, you're right," Bryce said, wonderingly.

I heard his footsteps behind me. "They..

.they cut a path through the godsgrass all the way from the coast, Aelia.

I never put much store in the whole idea of the grass protecting us, but dear gods," he said again, his voice rising in alarm, "they cut a path from the coast for those creatures to cross. "

"So, what were they doing then? Testing our defenses as my uncle believed the ships off the coast were here to do?"

"I don't know. Perhaps that is all it was—a test to see how we would react. But if it is necromancy, then you can be assured that Penjan is behind it. They are the whole of the dark continent now that they have taken Arkyl."

"Have you had any word from my cousin?" I asked, suddenly terrified that the small party of soldiers he traveled with might encounter a band of those dead things in the godsgrass.

"I have not," Bryce said, his lips a thin line. "But I sent a bird to the Point. We have decided to form an enclave in the city chambers to decide whether to summon the fyrds."

An enclave in the city chambers meant all eleven eldermen must be in attendance, and they must decide unanimously to act without any influence from the crown.

It was a process that could last anywhere from five minutes to five weeks, as they argued the merits of bringing their respective armies to the capital.

I left Bryce in the courtyard and began to make my way back to the castle, feeling like all the world had grown unsettled around me.

A cheer went up behind me. I turned to see the soldiers in the courtyard had their arms and faces raised as they shouted triumphantly.

I followed their gazes to see dark wings set against the sky as four dragons wheeled overhead. The men of Windemere were cheering the Darkwatch dragon mages as they flew sentry over the city.

I knew that was what Io was doing. He had probably crossed the entire kingdom, looking for more of those dead things—more paths cut through the godsgrass.

I couldn't stop the smile that spread across my face even as I caught sight of a few of the Windemerian commanders, distinctive in their golden helms, whose gazes were narrowed on the soldiers with displeasure.

I left the courtyard, and what felt like a more than historic moment in the world of men, to find Taiger and my dragon waiting for me just inside the doorway to the castle.

Taiger's smile echoed mine as we made our way back to my chambers, and it did not fade until I filled him in on the battle and the dead things that had cut their way across the plains.

Io was at dinner that night, looking devastating in his customary black coat and breeches. As always, I found it impossible to keep my eyes off him, but since he seemed just as inclined to keep his on me, I didn’t put much effort into it.

The party was a raucous affair as the Radune emissaries pressed the dragon mages for details of the battle. News of the skirmish had already spread throughout the castle and probably the city, as well.

The nobles and courtiers joined the emissaries in bemoaning the fact that they had not been there to see the action for themselves.

Aben and Britaxia supplied enough details, though, to whet their appetites for the adventure they had all missed.

I couldn’t help but wonder at their capacity to turn the terror of finding undead soldiers on the plains into a cause for celebration. Perhaps it said something about the resilience of the human spirit…or some such nonsense. To me, it just seemed like willful ignorance and stupidity.

Io broke tradition just before the dessert course was served, as he rose from his chair and took the one on my right—the one where Markus would have sat if he had been in the city.

"I found him," he said quietly. I was confused. My mind was still focused on the battle, and it took me several moments to realize he meant that he found Castille.

I smiled, unsure how much I should say with so many ears close by. "Will you take care of it tonight, then?" I asked, hoping against hope that he would ask me to come along.

He shook his head. I noticed he was tapping his index finger on the table in a way that I'd come to realize meant he felt some tension.

"The bastard doesn't even live in Albiyn," he said, raising a brow. "Which is, no doubt, what makes it hard for your guards to apprehend him here. He lives in some apparent hole in the ground called Cosdam."

"It's north of here—on the Long Fork River," I supplied.

He nodded once, and I heard the knuckles of his hand crack as he stopped tapping and made a fist on the table. "It turns out Castille is nothing more than a go-between for my own countrymen and the King of fucking Penjan, himself."

That was surprising. I imagined Castille supplying the Withian children to necromancers working in the shadows of Albiyn.

Perhaps selling their spells to wealthy noblewomen who wanted to look younger, or old men who wanted to make their cocks stand up.

I would never have guessed it went as far into Penjan as the Shadow King himself.

"Do you know which of your own countrymen?" I asked.

That sly, merciless grin overtook his face, and I knew that he did. "They will pay—dearly," he said.

I felt a chill snake down the entire length of my spine as I imagined what he had done to get the information from Elias Addison.

Some cruel, primal part of me wanted to ask—wanted him to detail it—if only to satisfy my own blood lust. Whatever Io had done, the man had deserved worse.

And I hoped he was still somewhere screaming, even then.

Io left me at the table shortly after, still paying no heed to the affronted stares of the Windemerian courtiers in response to him having the nerve to take my uncle's chair.

"Goodnight, Princess," he said, dipping his head just enough so that his eyes were framed under the harsh line of his dark brow.

The whites seemed brighter somehow, the shape of the eye more significant, and that midnight pupil seemed more alive than it had been moments before, as though something slick slithered through the swirling deep blue.

I felt his eyes on me long after I knew he was gone. The little hairs on the nape of my neck seemed to dance as that chill raced up and across my scalp. A dull ache of want, of need, sat low in my belly.

I laid in bed that night, tossing in my blankets. They became mockingly twisted around my legs every time I moved as though they were chains attaching me to the bed so that I would not follow that very familiar path I knew led to his door.