Alloria woke to darkness, and the world felt wrong. She could taste the bitter after-effects of the narcotic, and wondered how long she had been under its spell. An hour? Three hours? She sat up, disorientated and feeling mildly nauseous. She shivered, and stepping from her bed pulled on a long silk gown, kicked her feet into thick slippers and found the water jug. She drank greedily, the dehydrated drink of the blue, and only then did a flood of questions tumble into her gradually awakening mind…
Why had the lanterns not been lit? In her chambers, and also outside, on the paved walkways? Normally the garden would be filled with globes of light. Alloria found it hard to believe the lightsmiths had been remiss in their duty.
Warily, she moved to the doors of her chamber and opened one a crack. Outside, a velvet silence rolled through the Autumn Palace. Alloria listened for the familiar footsteps of guards, the distant clink of armour. She heard nothing. She opened her mouth to call out, and closed it again, changing her mind.
Where was Erran? And the other guards? During the hours of darkness she usually had two men posted outside her sleep chambers. Where were they? It was unthinkable they would be away from their post.
Her eyes scanned the black, and goosebumps ran up and down her flesh. Something was wrong; deeply wrong. She could feel it in her blood and bones. Slowly, she eased the door shut. She had a short sword, nicknamed a glade blade, back by the bed. She crept away, back, and padded across the floor. She winced as she drew the blade, for it whispered, oiled steel on leather, but she felt better with the sword in her hands. She knew how to use it; how to defend herself; although she had never been called upon, in reality, to kill, and somewhere deep in her subconscious she wondered how she would respond to the necessity.
She stood, in the darkness, uncertain of what to do.
Then a voice broke the silence; it was cool, clear, and way too arrogant. “What are you going to do with the sword, sweet little Queen Alloria?”
She tensed, poised for attack, tracing the voice that was in the room, gods, he was in the room and with her and where was Erran, where were the guards? Would she have to fight the intruder alone?
Fear flooded her.
“Who are you?” Her voice was stone. Ice.
Something moved in the darkness, and Alloria lifted her sword, a swift movement, or so she thought. In retrospect, it was probably hampered by the drugs she’d taken to help her sleep; to help alleviate the nightmares.
“I am here to help.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Graal. I have travelled a long way for you, my queen.” He stepped into a pool of light filtering through high windows; he was tall, athletic, and moved with grace. He had long white hair and blue eyes blackened by the night. His face was beautiful, and Queen Alloria found herself paralysed by the effect. He carried no weapon.
“My guards are nearby,” she said, voice quieter than she would have liked.
“Your guards are all dead,” sighed General Graal. As if emphasising his point, and with perfect timing, something huge moved outside, crunching wood, gouging marble, and settled with a grunt. It was big, Alloria could sense that; and primitive. It grunted when it breathed, its shadow a crazy dance on a far wall.
What are you? she thought, with a shudder.
What is happening here?
Graal approached, and the sword flickered up with a hiss, but he carried on moving and stepped within her reach, batting the blade aside with a consummate ease that shamed her. She tried to withdraw the weapon, to stab at him, but he held the blade and then he held her jaw, and fear flushed through her like an emetic.
“Where is Mary?” she said.
“Alas, nearly everyone is dead.”
“No!”
“All dead.”
“Erran?”
“All dead, my sweetness. It is you we have come for; and your…drug taking has made it so easy. So sweet.” Alloria fell from the world, then, fell and fell and only recovered when she realised Graal was removing her clothes.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked. Outside, the huge creature shifted again, cracking timber.
“Alas, this is a necessary consequence of war.”
She started to fight, but Graal was too strong, and he punched her, suddenly, viciously, and she lay stunned half on the bed, her gown hitched high, her cold pale loins exposed in the gloom.
Without passion Graal fucked her, raped her, and she cried and her tears soaked into the bed sheets and as Graal rose to ejaculation so his head lowered, incisors ejecting, and her bit her neck and she screamed and he tasted her blood, drank her as with a grunt he came, and she felt warmth inside her and blood pumping from her, and everything made her sick and weak and weeping; she turned, and vomited on the bed, and conversely, this seemed to give Graal some pleasure; some form of satisfaction.
He pulled up his breeches, his childmaker pale and thin and glittering with complex gold and brass wires in the spilling light from the moon. Emphatically, he licked Alloria’s blood from his vachine fangs.
“My husband will hunt you down for this,” snarled Alloria, eyes narrowed, fingers plugging the twin wounds in her neck. Hatred was a real thing in her core, a toxic scorpion wild in her breast.
“I hope so,” said Graal, and gestured, to where Mary was held in a tight embrace by an albino warrior. She was bound, gagged, her eyes wide. She had seen everything. Graal smiled, a crooked smile full of malice. “See she is released near to Leanoric’s camp. It will provide…interesting results, I feel.”
“What are you doing?” hissed Alloria.
A sword pressed against her throat, and she whimpered, and Graal leant in close. He kissed her lips, passionately, with love, and she was too frightened to pull away. She could still feel his seed, warm inside her, and with shame she feared him, but more, with guilt she feared the cold darkness of death.
“I am laying a trail,” he said, and gestured. Mary, the sweet little one who had attended Alloria so honourably, was dragged by her hair from the room. Blood streaked her face, her breast and her loins. She had not been treated well.
“He will kill you,” hissed Alloria. “He will kill you all!”
“We will see,” said Graal, and struck a savage blow which knocked her to the bed; then to the floor. Darkness flooded in, and she remembered no more.
EIGHT
Stone Lion Woods
The canker leapt with a howl, and the girls hunkered in terror. It landed, and with a blink they realised they weren’t the target. One of the woodsmen was still alive, groaning softly, and had lifted his sword and rolled, groan turning to a snarl at the sight of the canker…which stooped, suddenly, and with a crunch, bit off his head.
Kat eased through dead pine needles, through the rotting forest underlay as the canker ate the corpse noisily. It tore long strips of meat from his thighs and bones with crunches and rips, and then from the man’s broad arse, huge lumps which glistened. It swallowed them down in a fast, slick gobble.
They both crouched, watching the canker. Nienna felt herself shivering, and they scavenged around for what torn items lay at their feet. As they dressed in rags, so Kat stood on a dead branch, which cracked. The canker lifted its head from its feast, blood rimed around the massive open jaws, and stringing from its twisted teeth. Nienna saw, suddenly, that this was a different creature from back at the cottage. The mouth was smaller, more lop-sided to the left, the teeth like blackened steel stumps, which bludgeoned meat rather than sliced it. It was also slimmer, less bulky than the first canker they’d witnessed, and with a start, Nienna saw it had breasts, small and rounded, hanging down between its stumpy front legs; the nipples gleaming like polished iron, aureoles of copper, and within the frighteningly thin translucent skin tiny pistons worked.
