Daybreak (76 page)

Three more bursts answered it, each rising from a corner of the fight. The lights swelled into pillars as they rose and fell back to earth in something that looked like a blinding white net.

The net’s cords draped over the monsters’ heads and for a moment, they clawed desperately against the trap. Then all at once, they fell silent.

The rain stopped. Kael watched in shock as the clouds above them broke, shattering like a clay pot against the stone floor, evaporating into the pale sky beyond. A red shadow crossed his boots. He turned in time to see something that looked like a mist of blood spray above the western wall.
 

It hung for only a moment, all of the crimson droplets trembling in the light of the coming dawn. Then it dropped back behind the wall with a hiss.

Another surge of red light drew Kael’s eyes back to the battle. The King’s monsters had fallen silent the moment the clouds broke. Now they watched with black, deadened eyes as the collars around their throats turned molten. Their shackles slid away in an iron rush, matting into their fur and cooling against their skin in ripples.

The silence lasted only a moment before the monsters attacked.

They scattered in every direction, bursting out from beneath the shaman’s white net and onto the throats of Midlan. Gold-tinged bodies flew through the air; screams racked the walls. A large group of soldiers shoved past Kael and sprinted for the gate — braving the light of Daybreak to avoid the monsters’ jaws.

It happened so quickly that Kael hardly had a chance to breathe. The mass of bodies that crushed for the gate parted against an arc of Daybreak’s molten edge, but there were still too many soldiers in the way. The tide of monsters was coming closer: drool trailed their fangs and their blackened eyes shone with fury. The shamans’ spell flickered as more of the monsters escaped the net.

Then with a pained howl, the light went out.

A wolf monster had Graymange around the throat. Panic shoved Kael forward the moment he saw the wolf shaman’s thin figure hefted above the fray. Daybreak slung through the crowd, devouring flesh and steel. Its fire seemed to burst with renewed fury as Kael’s panic rose. But there were simply too many bodies in the way.

He would never reach Graymange in time.

The wolf monster almost lost its grip when the shaman twisted into his second shape, but managed to catch him by the scruff of his neck. Kael watched them between blinding flashes of Daybreak’s light, bellowing at the tops of his lungs.
 

A scruffy pack of dogs tried to free their shaman, but a line of monsters kept them back. They weren’t fooled by the shapechangers’ speed: their black, pitted stares wrapped around the entire courtyard, and their warped ears twitched to follow every sound. It seemed to be taking all of the dogs’ focus just to avoid the sweep of their claws.

Graymange and the wolf monster had their faces hardly an inch apart. The shaman snarled viciously, his lips peeled back from his jagged teeth — while the monster’s jaw cracked open for the kill.

Kael was still too far. The shapechangers beat helplessly against the monsters’ line. There were too many bodies in his way, his glimpses between them too brief to line up a throw. An arc from Daybreak would devour them both. He’d spun for the ramparts, hoping the height would give him a decent shot, when something high atop Midlan caught his attention.

He thought it was one of the King’s birds, at first: an object the size of a man plummeted from the mouth of an opened window. It twisted and flailed against the pull of the earth. But it wasn’t until the object crossed out from beneath the shadow of the onyx towers that he saw what it was.

A man — a man in a gold-spun tunic with a black dragon etched across its front. His hands scraped helplessly at the air beneath him; his legs kicked in wild arcs. Kael only caught a glimpse of the terror upon his face, and the deep gouge that ran across his jaw.

The man’s eyes seemed to widen with every second his body fell, until he finally struck the ground.

His death sent tremors across the battlefield. The monsters staggered backwards in the silence it left behind, and Kael saw his chance. He sheathed Daybreak and grabbed a dagger off one of the fallen soldiers. Though its hilt was slightly melted, he thought it still ought to fly.

By the time he made it up to the ramparts, everything had changed.

The wolf monster held Graymange tightly, but its snarl had fallen slack. All of the black pulled from the edges of its stare, swirling away like foam swept out by the tide. The black drained into the monster’s pupils slowly — leaving its eyes a deep, intelligent brown.

Kael’s arm froze above him, and the dagger slipped from his hand. Those eyes … they were the same as Bloodfang’s — the mark of a shapechanger with its mind still intact. Though its body stayed twisted, all of the fury left its gaze. The monster sat Graymange gently upon the ground and called to him with a low whine.

The other monsters stumbled like drunkards as the darkness left their eyes. They blinked around them, their faces bent in shock. The shamans watched unblinkingly from the four corners of the courtyard. With all of the soldiers either dead or scattered, the battlefield seemed frozen in time.

Graymange stared the wolf monster down. His furry head tilted at the noise of its whines and his ears pricked tall. Then all at once, his chest swelled — and a sky-rending howl burst from his lungs.

It was so sharp and terrible a sound that Kael expected the battle to start all over again. But it didn’t. Instead, wolf monsters came pouring from every direction to cluster around him, adding their own voices to Graymange’s song. The dogs barked and leapt around the monsters, tails beating furiously against the air.

One by one, the shamans called out — and the monsters answered: the bears bellowed, the lions roared. Foxes yipped and sprung from the crowd, their bright red tails bristled with excitement. When the hawk shaman took to her wings, the screech she let out drew all of her birds in a swarm around her.
 

She took off towards the swamp — and as she went, crow and hawk monsters drifted from every corner of the sky to follow.

There were so many strange creatures gathered together that Kael could hardly take it in. But the strangest among them wasn’t a
creature
at all: it was a man. He lumbered out from between the keep’s shattered doors, his heavy steps thumping against the earth. Though his face was badly mangled with bruises and scars, it was difficult not to notice the upward tilt of his crooked mouth …

Or the gleam in his one good eye.

The wolf monsters howled again at the sight of the scarred man. They leapt around him and threw their great bodies against his ravaged chest. Deep growls split their twisted throats as he scratched their ears.

Graymange bared his teeth as he reached up in welcome. His hand hardly came to the small of the scarred man’s back. It was only when the wolf shaman turned to Kael that he realized all eyes had fallen upon his.

The hawk shaman was already gone, having winged off into the swamps with her strange flock in tow. Kael stared at the courtyard around him — empty, save for the shapechangers and the mass of gold-tinged bodies. The fact that all the darkness was gone from the monsters’ stares could’ve only meant that the curse was broken.

He saw no need to keep them in the fortress a moment longer. “Go,” he said, fighting against a smile. “Your debt is more than settled.”

Graymange touched his chest. “We will be forever grateful, Marked One.”

Though he’d done nothing to deserve it, the thunder of their thanks broke his smile free. He was grinning by the time the last fox slipped out the of the gates into the field beyond — and perhaps it was because he was so focused on their march that he didn’t notice the growing shadow above him until it’d already struck.

The wind screamed past his ears as he fell from the ramparts, but the warrior in him steeled its legs. He caught himself in a roll and flopped onto his back — just in time to bear the weight of a familiar iron grip.

“Kyleigh!”

She sat on top of him, eyes blazing beneath her scowl. Sweat covered her face and ran down her neck in molten lines. Her arms trembled as her hands scraped up his chest … and curled tightly around his throat.

Her grip shortened his breath. She was pushing down upon him, strangling him. “Kael,” she growled as her fingers tightened.

Red crossed her skin in a furious rush, and that was when he noticed the collar around her throat. Though the monsters’ collars had melted away, Kyleigh’s still burned brightly. She bared her teeth against its growing light; her fingers tightened again.

“
Kael
.”

He worked quickly, peeling the spell away and tearing the iron collar into two. Only once it’d fallen did she collapse upon his chest.

“Kael …” she breathed as her hands slipped away. “Blazes. For a moment there, I thought Ulric was actually going to make me kill you.”

He wrapped his arms around her middle and crushed her in against him, holding on as tightly as he could. Relief filled his limbs in a rush of cool, filled his heart to its brim. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t kill me.”

She laughed as she kissed him. “Me too. I hate to admit it, but I’ve grown rather fond of you.”

His reply was swept away, drowned out by a familiar, earth-trembling roar. Kyleigh twisted to glare at the monstrous black shadow that rose above Midlan’s onyx towers.

A flash of gold shone on Dorcha’s spiny back. His great neck twisted and with a heave, he managed to knock a tiny figure off his spines. She caught herself on the jagged ledge of a tower and held on with one hand as Dorcha tore past her — waving a golden axe at his tail with the other.

“Gwen,” Kael said, when he recognized her curses. “What’s she —?”

“They’re all here. Everybody. They stormed the western wall and broke Midlan to pieces. I’ve taken care of Crevan, but Ulric’s still alive. And he’s got a hold on Devin.” Kyleigh sprang to her feet and pulled Kael up beside her. “I’ll keep him busy —”

“No, I don’t want you anywhere near that monster. He’ll kill you!”

She grabbed him around the face, and her eyes blazed as she growled: “He’s not a monster. Devin is a decent creature, but he’ll be dangerous for as long as he’s cursed. That’s why I need you to go into the fortress. Find Ulric. Kill him. Put a stop to this madness. I’m depending on you, Kael,” she added at a whisper. “Please — trust me one more time. I promise I’ll fly safely.”

She took off before he had a second to protest, tearing into the skies with a roar and a burst of grit. Her body was little more than a white bolt as she shot past Dorcha. His mad, blackened eyes traced her flight — and his enormous body twisted to follow.

Kael knew there was only one way to stop him. So he drew Daybreak and charged into the keep, his mind set on what had to be done.

*******

“Are you sure we’re headed the right way?” Declan grunted as he squeezed through another narrow portal. His head thumped hard against a low jut of stone, but he hardly felt it: the pirates’ grog had numbed him to the point that he hardly felt anything.

“I do not know what the
right
way is. But I know we are going north. Keep up, giant,” Nadine said, reaching back to prod him with her spear. “And watch your great stone head.”

They were deep inside the tunnels of Midlan. Declan hadn’t even known that Midlan
had
tunnels. They’d slipped through the gates not long after the wildmen had busted them open, and planned to hide out inside one of the towers until the rest of the army went on.
 

But no sooner did Declan turn his back than one of the little mots found a passage hidden behind a stack of crates — and off they’d gone.

“Leave it to the wee sandbeaters to find the cracks in everything. You probably live under rocks and swim in puddles,” he grunted.

Nadine frowned at him from over her shoulder. The torch she carried brightened her eyes and brought a warm glow to her skin. It set such a fire in Declan’s chest that he had to smile to keep from roasting.

“You are a fool,” Nadine muttered — but not before she’d smiled back.

They lagged at the rear of the mots’ line. All of the little desert people flitted through the tunnels ahead: they’d pop in and out of chambers, torches spitting behind them — chattering to each other in their strange, musical tongue. Every once in a while, they’d give Nadine some sort of direction, and she’d turn them down a different path.

“How can they keep up with it, eh? How do they know where we’re headed?” Declan wondered. The way the grog had his head spinning, it was a struggle to keep track of his
feet
— let alone which paths they’d already taken. They might very well be going around in circles.

When he said as much, Nadine prodded him again. “Do not worry yourself over it, giant. This is a
mot’s
business.”

He was thinking of a retort when one of the mots called to Nadine. He spoke in a rush and, after a moment of listening, she sent the others after him with a wave of her spear.

“What is it?” Declan said as they peeled away.

“There is a strange voice coming from up ahead — a voice that says he is in trouble.”

She rushed off, and Declan thumped after her. “Well, just be careful about it. You never know what you’re going to find in these dark, twisty sorts of places.”

A few steps more, and he heard the voice for himself. It was coming from the other side of the wall, muffled by several inches of mortar and stone:

“Hello? Is someone there? Oh, you have to help me! The King’s got me locked away, and I can’t work the latch. Come quickly — ah, unless you’re one of those foul mages, in which case I’d rather just be left alone to rot.”

There was a thick wooden panel set inside one of the walls. The mots swarmed around it, running their fingers across its edges. They traced as high as their hands could reach, then they searched with their eyes.

“Ah, there!” one of them called.

There was a short coil of rope hanging from the ceiling. The mots had no hope of reaching it, but Declan could. He gave it a sharp tug, and the panel swung open with a
thwap
.