Arc 8: Chapter 42: The Briar King |
“I regret my tardiness,” Ildeban said as he walked forward at a leisurely pace. The medallions hung about his sable armor and cape clinked with every step. “It was more difficult than I expected to find the right flowers, but I think white is your color.”
A misshapen smile touched the creature’s lips, but it faltered when he seemed to notice Evangeline’s present state, and me standing over her with my sword still half raised.
“How uncouth,” the Briar King growled as he lifted an accusing finger to point at me. “That is my betrothed, ser!”
“What have you done?” I asked, directing my words to Evangeline.
The vampire was still trembling with fear and pain from her burns. She looked just as shocked at this development as me, but her eyes narrowed and with a sudden motion she slapped at me with her wings, causing me to fall back or risk losing my eyes to the sharp claws at their tips. As I stumbled, Evangeline scrambled to all fours and crawled up the side of a half broken pillar, hunching at its top like a gargoyle.
“Lillian is dead,” the vampire hissed. “Most of my knights have been slain.”
“I brought my own,” Ildeban said dismissively. Even as he said it, distant sounds echoed through the castle. They were triumphant, bestial calls, war cries far more primal and hideous even than the eerie wails of the dead.
I’d heard that sound before, in Tol. Ildeban had brought his warband of changeling marauders. Who did they hunt in the fortress’s halls? The servants and guests? How had he even brought them through the city?
Evangeline’s transformed face twisted with doubt, and I could tell she was asking herself the same questions. I guessed the answer quickly — either he or Lillian had probably opened a wendgate in preparation for this moment. They’d never intended to give Evangeline all the power in their alliance.
“That’s what this was about all this time?” I asked in disbelief. “Becoming a real king? Do you really believe that she will protect you from Nath?”
I used my sword to point at Evangeline, who glared back at me with tired hate.
Ildeban peeled his scarred lips back in a sneer. “Nath is not so mighty as she once was. None of them are — you saw that at Tol, same as I. The time of Seydis has ended, and the reign of both elf and angel has entered its twilight. There is room for something new…”
Almost as though to punctuate his statement, another beastly howl tore through the keep. Closer this time.
“You should give me your answer quickly,” Ildeban said to Evangeline as he lifted his bundle of roses to inhale their scent. “My squires are difficult to corral when they get worked up, and I would rather not make a great mess of this place.”
“You have nothing else to gain,” Evangeline said in numb confusion. “Lillian is dead, the drow escaped…”
Ildeban threw his head back and let out a bubbling laugh. “We do not need her! The Silberdotter’s blood flows through you, my dear! The Bannerfolk have submitted to you. The Accord is distracted and weak. Its Empress has abandoned Forger for her throne in the south, and the Onsolain are focused on their fallen brother in the east… there is opportunity here.”
His motivations were starting to make more sense to me. I’d believed that Lillian and Ildeban were opportunists, desperate and cast astray after the downfall of the Vykes, trying to tie their ship to any form of power they could. I’d even considered the possibility that they were fleeing from either Calerus Vyke, newly ascended King of Talsyn, or even Reynard himself. It justified much of their behavior.
That had likely been true of Lillian. But Ildeban fought at Tol, having obviously coordinated with the Gorelion’s appearance. He’d hunted during the Fall, and indulged Hasur Vyke’s plots afterward. He was a mercenary, but he wanted more. He wanted a kingdom of his own, not just the mocking illusion of one the briarfae had trapped him in.
A kingdom, and a queen who matched him in his beastliness. All his actions thus far, his erratic appearances, his swaggering and threats — they’d all been a form of courtship.
He’d waited until this moment, with Evangeline on the cusp of defeat, to ride in and play her dark hero. This was all staged for this moment. I doubted he even cared about Lillian’s fate — likely, he’d planned to get rid of her himself before all was said and done.
There was only one thing I did not understand. Why had Nath wanted to save him? Why did she attempt to stall his execution? Surely, she would understand that such a rebellious dog needed to be put down, that he endangered her power as much as anyones. Why all this talk of rebellion against Umareon, why the Choir’s friction over this up-jumped bandit?
Something wasn’t adding up.
Think, Alken. Think. There’s always some extra twist, some motive or missing element that ends up blindsiding you.
Umareon and his advocates want Ildeban dead, so the Briar can be opened. Urddha and the others wouldn’t tell me what’s in it, but it will let the Onsolain act as they will, remove their goddess’s restrictions on them. But not all of them want that, and it has to be a mortal who makes the choice… the Briar King himself, or the one who slays him.
But the Onsolain could not simply kill him, for killing mortals went against one of the God-Queen’s restrictions on their power. That was the whole premise by which they needed me and Rysanthe. So they’d dispatched the hand of Death Itself to do the deed. The Briar Elves, through Nath, had objected at this overreach on their authority, and our enemies had taken advantage of the tension.
And beyond all of that, the Briar Elves and Nath no longer had power over their wayward servant, because the Traitor Magi had released him from his chains. With the Briar King’s own bonds undone and Nath wounded, he held the strength to slaughter Chesh and his kin and break the seal, just like Alicia did with Tuvon.
For some reason I did not understand, Reynard wanted that as well, to break all of Aureia’s seals even though it might free the Choir to act as they willed. His motives, I could not comprehend.
Yet Ildeban had not done so. Perhaps he couldn’t, or had been barred from the Heart by the briarfae. Instead, he wanted to marry himself to this newly minted queen.
Why? He had to know it wouldn’t last, that either the Accord or the Briar would bring them to ruin eventually.
No… in a rush of understanding, and horror, I understood my mistake, the piece I’d overlooked. He’d just said it himself.
Let us bond Briar to Ark, thorn to night!
The Silberdotter’s blood flows through you.
None of this was as opportunistic as I’d believed. The capture of the Guardian of the Underworld, the presence of various powers at this gathering, Evangeline being given legitimacy as a monarch by both her vampiric forebear and by her own people. And the Briar King marrying himself to her, when she held the strength of the Reaper of Draubard in her own veins.
My attention was drawn to the Corpse Moon rising high overhead, ascendant — rather than its usual dull gray, it had taken on a sickly greenish hue. It was almost never full without its greater, more verdant sibling overshadowing it.
The day Seydis burned, there had been an eclipse. And at Garihelm, there was a great storm.
It was a ritual.
“You’re trying to destroy it all at once,” I muttered.
Evangeline glanced at me, confusion writ on her fiendish features. Ildeban only smiled that mocking smile, and smelled his roses.
A soft wind brushed my face, and I turned just as a pale figure alighted next to me. Tzanith had descended down from the breaks in the ceiling, alive but not untouched. She was covered in wounds and looked dimmer somehow. Her right eye, the golden one, was sealed shut by a long, ragged cut. Her clothes were slashed in several places, and ichorous faerie blood dried against her skin.
“You’re alive,” I said in relief.
“Barely.” The Elf Queen’s handmaiden fixed her uninjured eye on Ildeban, the one that was such a deep blue as to be nearly black. “That malcathe escaped. Not whole, but she marked me in turn.”
The torslowan was the least of our problems. I saw that Penric had managed to prop Lisette and Olliard against the steps leading up to the throne. He’d wrapped Lisette’s wounded arm, but there was a lot of blood. A major vein must have been cut, and her Art didn’t work as well on herself.
Tzanith looked to Evangeline then, who wore a confused, wary expression, like a cornered animal who didn’t know which threat to focus on. “If you agree to marry him, Your Majesty, it will resurrect Briarland as a true kingdom. It will emerge from the Wend, right here in the middle of this city. The Qliphoth will spread and remake your country. Not only that, it will also break through the ceiling of Draubard, and release the dead from their gaols.”
I looked at her in surprise as she described the very calamity I’d only just imagined, but the elf paid me no mind.
She continued in a more firm voice. “It will kill thousands.”
“Tens of thousands,” Ildeban agreed lightly. “But those who survive shall be made strong. A faerie realm all of our own. I have waited long for this promise to be fulfilled to me…” Once again he offered the bloodstained roses to Evangeline. “Accept, and you and I shall rule in strength even as the rest of the world burns.”
“You knew?” I asked Tzanith, already feeling that first sickly, bitterly familiar sensation of betrayal.
She shook her head, making her mane of black curls sway. “I am aware of Ildeban’s curse, nothing more. We did not anticipate that he would try this. It is an old prophecy, and one we thought he had given up on.”
A prophecy? A curse? “What are you talking about, Tzanith?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but Ildeban spoke over her.
“I did give up on it, for a long time.” He started to pace, his mismatched armor and trophy marks clinking with an off-rhythm, agitated sound. “But then… then I found her!”
He spread his arms out to indicate Evangeline, enthroned then atop her broken column as though she were some masterwork painting. Indeed, she very much seemed the devil queen in her fiend form, her clawed wings wrapped about the stone and the unhallowed moon shining down on her.
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“Where even Lillian’s clever ploys failed to trap the Faen of Draubard, this barely tested warrior cornered and subdued her!” Ildeban bared his fangs in feral approval. “She not only survived an encounter with the echo of the Lindenwurm, but defied death itself and tamed the very demon who tried to steal her body!”
His movements became more aggressive, his passion rising before our eyes. “She ripped the still beating heart from her rival, escaped the chaos in the Emperor’s city, and with but a small contingent of loyal knights and a year, she cowed all the clans of the Banner and became their ruler!”
Ildeban clenched his empty hand into a fist, his gaze fixed with fond intensity on Evangeline. “You are beautiful. We would make such a match, you and I.”
“It is not a wife you desire, Lord of Irks.” Tzanith spoke with steady calm. “What you want is a throne, though you were given one.”
“I WAS GIVEN A SHACKLE AROUND MY NECK!” Ildeban roared. “That witch deceived me!”
“You deceived yourself, Ivan Hunting.” Tzanith’s words were calm and sad in the face of the Briar King’s rage. “You continue to blame Her for your own hubris, and you already know how you can be free of your curse.”
When she saw my look, she quietly explained. “In order to be freed from his oath, he must name a successor himself, and they must be of a High House with direct descent from Edaean blood. He desires a kingdom, but he also wishes to obtain an heir.”
“That was the God-Queen’s condition?” I asked. “And all these centuries, he hasn’t done it?”
There weren’t many High Houses who could directly trace their lines back to the Exodus anymore, but it wasn’t like they were extinct either. The Arks counted themselves as one of those prestigious clans.
“Ildeban himself provided the condition of his release,” Tzanith said. “Even as a mortal man, his own pride was his downfall. The Huntings were born of mixed Edaean and Urnic blood, and he cast them off before he became this.”
“Bah!” The creature in question made a dismissive gesture. “You Sidhe are ones to talk of hubris. You were not there, little pixie, but I see your mother in you. A shame about Raya. Had she not spurned me, she might have avoided what that abgrüdai did to her. Truly, a shame.”
Anger flickered across Tzanith’s elfin features.
I glanced to Evangeline, who still hadn’t spoken. She just stared at Ildeban as he ranted, her expression unreadable.
A pitfall in this scheme came to my mind immediately — vampires could not procreate. I almost said as much, but stopped myself. That wasn’t exactly true. They could bear children, but only with an incredible amount of blood, and the aid of a demon.
“This is why Nath didn’t want him dead.” I made the realization aloud. “If he dies, he can’t choose a new guardian.”
“He is a treacherous wretch,” Tzanith agreed. “He has made himself as much of a nuisance as possible, allied with the Adversary, done everything to earn the Choir’s wrath.”
And yet, Umareon’s solution trampled on the purpose of the Briar. It wasn’t that they wanted to save Ildeban — they simply wanted to take care of the problem in their own way. And Rysanthe wasn’t just his assassin, but a reaper of souls. If she claimed Ildeban’s soul for the Choir, then could they compel him to choose a successor? Or had Umareon simply wanted him out of the way, as Urddha had implied?
“Can he die?” I asked.
“Only by the hand of the Faen of Draubard,” Tzanith told me. “That is her role — she is Death to the Deathless, forged as insurance against just such a situation as this. He can also be slain by one he himself chooses as his heir. Otherwise, he is effectively immortal.”
This is what they meant about defying Umareon, I realized. I couldn’t kill him. It would leave the Briar permanently without a protector. And yet, because of the Traitor Magi’s tampering, the one meant to be doing that job was no longer compelled to do so. A paradox.
“Worked it out, have you?” Ildeban chuckled. “Shall we not cross blades then? A pity. I did so wish to finish our conversation from Tol.”
You’re the wise, merciful one, I said to the presence I still felt watching from within me. What am I supposed to do here?
But Finn Nu, or the one who was sometimes called that, said nothing. Useless changeling.
“If he does this,” Tzanith continued, “it will bring the Briar here.”
“The Underworld too,” I agreed.
And Nath was wounded, vulnerable, while there were very possibly other traitors like Cardinal Perseus in the sheol beneath Urn. It would be a calamity that might overshadow even the Fall. The Brothers of the Briar would not be able to stand against their lord. With Evangeline glutted on the strength of Draubard from feeding off Rsyanthe, and Ildeban’s own strength unshackled by Reynard and Hasur, they could cow the Briar and the Realm of the Dead to their own ends.
Ironic. Ildeban was simply a villain, greedy and proud, and as much as any enemy I’d ever faced deserved justice. And yet, his role protected him from retribution.
The solution was obvious. I just had to kill Evangeline. He would lose his dark bride and then this ritual would be nullified. After that, I’d drag the hobgoblin back to Briarland myself if I had to, in chains.
Assuming, of course, that I could beat both of them. The broken shaft of Penric’s arrow still ground against my shoulderblade, and my flesh remained raw from fresh burns. I had broken ribs, probably internal bleeding on top of it all. My vision wasn’t steady.
I’d fought in worse states.
But even as I stepped forward, grip tightening on Faen Orgis, that other still watching from within me broke his silence.
Wait.
I was tired of waiting. The enemy stood right there, grinning with such self-satisfied smugness, such assurance in his victory.
There have been many times in my life that I have been wrong. I have been short sighted, too trusting, too distrustful, too hopeful, too cynical. I’d never quite managed to find my balance, to trust anything, or when I did trust then I was so often proven a fool.
I’d simply accepted the idea that Evangeline would just say yes. That she would take the power and the victory Ildeban offered her, become that queen of blights and nightmares he wanted her to be.
But that’s because I hadn’t been paying enough attention, and I’d forgotten Evangeline Ark’s own words — I am as I have always been.
“I refuse.”
It was like the air suddenly went still. Even the moon’s dour radiance almost seemed to dim, as though in surprise.
Evangeline’s hellish form hunched on the broken column upon which she roosted. Corpse-colored flesh bubbled over shifting bones, the bat-like wings shrinking back into pale human arms. The mutated face sloughed away in gray sludge and mist to reveal the woman beneath.
She did not become human, never would again. Evangeline retained the crimson gleam of vampire eyes, the sharp glint of long fangs as she bared them. Her anger was directed at Ildeban.
“I refuse,” the Queen of the Bannerlands hissed. “How dare you suggest that I would bring your cancer into my home?!”
She stood then, tall and regal atop the broken stone. Her fiend form had been made mostly of phantasm, so she retained her queenly garments, the checkered cape and precious jewels. “I offered you a place at my side as king-consort, for the use of your warriors and your connection to Lilian’s allies. But I will not become your breeding mare, or a prop for your vanity. I reject your offer.”
Ildeban gaped at her, and all the swagger drained from him. His shoulders slumped, and for the first time since I’d encountered him at Caelfall he stopped grinning. “No… but… you cannot refuse! I have waited for so long to meet someone like you!”
Evangeline only sniffed contemptuously. “Then you have wasted the gift of immortality for nothing, my lord.”
Ildeban’s asymmetrical face twisted into a furious snarl. “Treacherous sow! You were the one to make the offer!”
“That was before I knew you intended to genocide my subjects. And before I saw how pitiful you are. You are no king, ser, and I rescind your invitation into my realm. Begone with you.”
Ildeban’s visage became something terrible. Not more monstrous — no, the twisted expression he wore then had nothing of the demon or the devil in it, nothing of the centuries old marauder known as the Hobgoblin of Yrrk. It was a very human look, full of hurt and disappointment.
But it passed quickly, giving way to cold rage, and with a roar he threw aside the roses and lifted his bloody hand. A spear of crackling green lightning formed in it, the same attack he’d used to shatter Faen Orgis at Tol.
I was too far to intervene, and I’m not sure if I even would have. But I did advance, intending to take advantage of the Briar King’s distraction and go on the offense. Dishonorable, perhaps, but I was wounded and he fresh, and I would not fail in my duty for the sake of a fair fight.
But Ildeban never released that fel spear. Instead, a cold wind blew through the throne room. It caught at the back of my neck, chilled me down to my very soul, doused the fire I’d already started to summon back.
I’d felt that before. Felt it in the long days after Baille Os, and earlier that same night in the crypts. It was a black wind, a death wind.
A reaper’s wind.
Pale blue fire erupted around Ildeban, forming a circle and caging him in. The aura he’d gathered in his gauntlet fizzled out, eaten by the Flames of Draubard, which carry the wrath and sorrow of the dead.
The one given the burden of wielding that flame stepped forth in a shaft of moonlight, passing into visibility as she emerged from the glamour she’d hidden behind. Rysanthe Miresgal, Silberdotter, Faen of Draubard and Death to the Deathless stood restored to the form I remembered.
She was a small thing, barely scraping five feet in height, a classical elf both in appearance and stature. Her skin was smooth ivory, her white-blond hair, usually bound into a long braid, hung loose around her shoulders. She would have been naked, but she’d turned my red cloak into an improvised chiton.
And in her hand she held a torch fashioned from black wood banded in silver, from which that same wraith fire blazed. The Hadean Brand, which was to the Doomsman of the Underworld as Faen Orgis was to the Headsman of Seydis — a symbol of her power, and her curse.
Ildeban cringed back from the flames of the Underworld. They doused his aura and prevented him from activating any Art, the same way Lillian had used them against me. When he caught sight of Rysanthe he let out a bark of mocking laughter. “You truly are a bloodhound, cave nymph! Would that Lillian had shattered your bones when she had the chance!”
“Would that she had,” Rysanthe said in a calm, cold voice. Usually violet, her eyes burned then with the same ghostly light that spat from the end of her brand. She stood just to the side of that circle of ghostflame, feeding it with her will.
I marveled at her recovery and appearance — how had this happened?
But I recalled Tzanith’s appearance, how dim the faerie light emanating from her was. She must have given some of it to Rysanthe, brought her here and used her own presence to distract Ildeban.
But she hadn’t restored the chthonian elf. I could see silver bones beneath the almost transparent fog of half-real flesh. Rysanthe was still weak from her ordeal, evident by the hunch in her posture and the look of concentration on her face. She was giving everything to subduing the Briar King’s aura. Just as I’d compelled Vicar to give the last of his strength to burn Lillian Rue.
Rysanthe caught my look and gave me a tight smile, likely meant to be comforting but made ghoulish when half of her face suddenly melted into fog, revealing the skull beneath. She whispered something, but the broken mirage of her flesh made it impossible to read her lips.
I didn’t know what she said, not exactly, but I felt I understood what she intended.
We could not kill Ildeban, who had once been Ivan Hunting, without depriving the Briar of its warden forever. He needed to choose a successor, and to face punishment for his crimes.
That did not mean he needed to be whole.
I had never stopped running, and while Ildeban laughed at the already fading flames and once again began to summon his dread spear, he wasn’t looking at me. He’d dismissed me, turned to what he perceived to be the greater threat.
I went through the flames, and they did not bite me. Those were not the angry, bitter ghosts I’d anchored to, but older and wiser dead, the raw and burning essence of those shepherded by Rysanthe Miresgal.
Ildeban turned to face me but a moment too late. He lifted up his spear, tensing, his orcish features forming a rictus of bloodlust. At this close range, he would unmake me. A crimson light had appeared around his brow — a crown of bloody thorns.
He was many things. He was centuries old, probably the single most dangerous warrior in all of Urn discounting only Rysanthe herself and Ager Roth. In a duel of Art, in open battle, he was probably my better. Hell, he might have even been the better swordsman.
Only, he hadn’t drawn his sword.
My blade flashed, an arcing cut made even as I skidded past him. I twisted and went low, but my sword went high, trailing an arc of pale blue fire as it slashed through Rysanthe’s cage of blue flames.
The towering form of the Briar King, clad all in black iron, stolen honors, and trophy furs, stood there for a moment that seemed to last an age. Then, like a great oak felled, that dread legend toppled and fell to the throne room’s floor with an unceremonious clatter. That look of rage and victorious pride remained fixed to his face even as the head it was attached to landed at my feet like a bloated green fruit.
Ildeban’s wide mouth kept working even as I turned to him. The crimson gleam in his eyes faded to their natural green hue as they rolled to me, gone wide with shock. He tried to mouth a question, but without air could not gasp it. I knew what he tried to say, in any case.
I reached down and lifted the hobgoblin’s head by its stringy hair, holding it up for all in the room to see. Rysanthe’s flames were still burning, though they had gone low, little more than a circle of cold blue light around us.
“How?” I asked the still animate head, voicing his own unspoken question. “Because you are immortal, my lord. I cannot kill you.”
I did not know the mechanics of his immortality, but if it was truly the product of a curse then I suspected that even obliterating his body to dust wouldn’t do the trick. His dark spirit would have simply taken residence in another vessel, probably one of his squires or a Briar Brother.
But Rysanthe wielded the flames of the Underworld, and within their bounds his soul had nowhere to go. It remained in his skull, which even then glared back at me with impotent hate.
And there it would remain.
