Wren the Fox Witch (Europa #3: A Dark Fantasy) (19 page)

“You need to sleep, Yaga,” Wren grabbed the woman’s hands and tried to make her focus. “Are you listening to me? You need to sleep, right now.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Again she pulled out of Wren’s grasp and stumbled to the railing. “I’ve been trying to sleep for weeks. I lie in the dark, all alone, in the quiet, and I close my eyes and try to think of nothing, try to rest, to slip away. But my mind never rests. The nightmares churn on and on and on!”

“Drugs! What about drugs? I can make something to make you sleep. I know a dozen plants that can put you to sleep in a heartbeat,” Wren said breathlessly. “Take me to your herb cellar, or to the palace kitchens. I can do this, I can help you sleep!”

“No! Not now. I can’t, I can’t.” The old woman clutched her head and leaned back. “How can I sleep when my baby is screaming in agony right in front of me? How could I forgive myself? How could I ever face him again, knowing that while he was in hell I was resting in my own bed?”

Woden, give me strength!

Wren swept her right hand across the balcony, hurling a great fist of aether out of the maelstrom beyond the railing and sending it into the witch’s chest. But Yaga merely raised an arm and the wave of aether burst apart into glimmering motes in the cold air.

“I’m trying to help you, Yaga,” Wren said slowly. “I want to help you, I do. I want to give you peace. I want to end your suffering, end your nightmares, end your pain. But if you won’t let me help you, then I’ll just have to stop you, because I’ll be damned if I’ll let you kill everyone in this city for your grief, no matter how much you love your son.”

Gudrun, Kara, this is your last chance. I swear to the good lord Woden that if you don’t help me now I will throw this ring of yours into the sea and leave your souls trapped in the dark until Ragnarok comes!

Wren made a fist, and a shape appeared in the air before her.

“Kara,” Wren whispered.

The ancient vala glared, her long black braids clattering with tiny bones. “You’re a fool of a child. How dare you threaten us? How dare you!”

All around her, the dim shades of the eight valas of Denveller appeared, short and tall and crippled, hissing at the girl in black.

Damn them all. I can do it alone!

Wren thrust out her hand and the aether obeyed her. The mist rose and smashed across the room into the old witch, sending her reeling against the far wall.

Yaga straightened up and pushed her long silvery hair back from her face. “I’m tired of this.” She pointed her hand at the girl and the aether rushed back across the room.

Wren dove to the floor and swept her hand over her head, guiding the aether up and away from her as she scrambled behind the wall at the edge of the stairs that led back down to the ground level. The aether swelled and flooded past her, racing and racing through the wall and out into the night, and when it finally stopped she dropped her arm to her side, gasping for breath and drenched in sweat.

Wren scrambled to her feet and dashed across the room. Yaga glared at her and raised both arms, but the girl crashed into her waist and knocked her to the ground before she could summon up another wave of freezing mist. The two women collided with the wall and then toppled to the floor in a tangle of skirts and hair and bones.

Huffing and straining, Wren grabbed the old witch’s wrists and wrestled her arms down to her sides as she rolled over. After a moment’s quiet struggle, Wren sat up on top of Yaga’s chest with the older woman’s arms pinned at her sides under Wren’s knees.

Wren leaned back and blew a curling lock of red hair out of her face as she paused to catch her breath.

Well, that wasn’t so hard after all.

“Now what?” Yaga grunted through her clenched teeth. “Are you going to sit on me forever? I am immortal, you stupid little girl. I will never grow tired, but you are already exhausted. Soon I’ll throw you to the ground, and crush your heart with my bare hands.”

“She’s right,” Gudrun muttered in Wren’s ear. “If you don’t think of something soon, you’ll be a corpse before midnight comes.”

“Help me or shut up!” Wren shouted.

Gudrun’s presence vanished and Wren looked down at Yaga’s smug grin.

“Having trouble, girl?” Yaga asked. “Are the souls in your little ring too much for you to master? How many are there, again? Nine, ten? Heh. There are dozens of souls in each of my bracelets, and you don’t hear me crying out for them to be silent.” The witch laughed.

Wren frowned down at her. “I’m sorry about this, but it should only hurt for a minute.” Wren folded her fingers together, turning her two hands into one bony hammer, raised her arms above her head, and brought them down as hard as she could on the old woman’s cackling face.

Yaga instantly went limp.

Wren leapt up and rolled the woman onto her stomach and whipped off her own belt. Then she stripped the clanking bracelets off the witch’s arms and bound her wrists together with the belt. She was still struggling to fit the ends of the belt together when the old woman groaned and twitched.

Done.

Wren stepped away with the bracelets cradled in her arm.

Yaga rolled onto her side and looked up with a trickle of dark blood on her lip. “You stupid child.”

Wren shook her head. “No, I’m not stupid. I know exactly what I’m doing, sister. I had a very good teacher.” She sat down on the floor a few paces away and let the bracelets fall into her lap. “His name is Omar Bakhoum. You might remember him. A middle-aged gentleman from Alexandria. Friendly, clever, and just a little bit immortal.”

Yaga’s eyes went wide. “Grigori? He’s here?”

“Omar, Grigori. He’s had a lot of names over the years.” Wren nodded seriously. She could feel the heat and panic of the last few minutes fading away, leaving her even more tired than before. “I see I have your attention now. That’s good. Maybe now we can start talking like civilized witches.”

Chapter 15. Running

“Damn it.” Lycus pointed up the road. “More aether.”

Tycho nodded. He could see the pale tendrils of the mist snaking over the rooftops and around the corners all around them.

It’s everywhere, draining down every street. We’re never going to make it to the barracks at this rate.

He stood in the middle of the dark road with the six young marines, and they listened to the cries and moans and shrieks of the people in the houses all around them.

“All right, boys, we need to—”

“Major!” Lycus pointed down a side alley with his knife in his hand.

Tycho jogged up beside him and peered into the deep shadows between the two houses. In the stillness, he heard footsteps coming closer, but moving in a limping, shuffling manner. He called out, “Hello?”

The feet shuffled closer.

“I’m Major Tycho Xenakis. Who’s there?”

The feet shuffled closer still.

“Damn this.” Tycho drew his revolver and strode to the mouth of the alleyway. “Who’s there? Answer or I’ll shoot!”

The feet shuffled closer and a figure loomed out of the darkness into the pale blue starlight. It was a man with skin the color of snow that sparkled in the light. The flesh from his cheek and lips was gone, revealing his teeth in an eternal grimace.

“God!” Tycho fired into the corpse’s face as he stumbled back and two more shots rang out over his shoulder and he saw Lycus standing beside him, pale and wild-eyed, his own gun smoking in his hand.

The corpse toppled over and hit the ground like a frozen beam.

“Back to the boats. Move, move!” Tycho holstered his weapon and ran with his marines at his sides. They darted down the center of the road, avoiding the shadows, and leaping clear of the thin wisps of aether seeping out into their path.

At the bottom of the road they struck the waterfront and turned right, ran another block, and clambered down the stone stairs to the water’s edge where their two dories bobbed, lashed to a rusting iron ring. The boys leapt into the boats and Tycho climbed in as quickly as he could, and a moment later they were rowing swiftly out into the Strait once more.

Tycho sat in the bow of his boat, staring back over the boys’ heads at the receding shore, but he couldn’t see the mist or any other figures walking in the shadows.

“God in heaven, it’s true,” Lycus whispered. “The deathless ones. The army of the dead. They’re real. They’re here.”

Tycho nodded slowly, but then frowned as he tried to remember exactly what he had seen stepping out from the dark alley. “He wasn’t dressed like a soldier, though. No uniform, no armor, no weapons. I think he was barefoot.”

“He was,” Lycus said. “I saw him. He was just wearing a shirt and pants. Nothing else. And they were torn up, too.”

“What kind of army goes around barefoot in rags?” Tycho muttered.

“What kind of army goes around dead?” Lycus asked.

The other boys were nodding and muttering in a quiet panic.

“It’s all right,” Tycho said loudly. “We’re all safe now. I doubt anything that clumsy and slow can swim, or at least not as fast as we can row.”

“What about the aether?” Lycus nodded toward the Palace of Constantine and the three Furies where the aether lay like a thick cloud all across the channel.

“We’ll just have to stay ahead of it,” Tycho said. “We’ll head up the Strait and stay away from land. If the aether keeps following, then we’ll just have to keep rowing, all night if we have to. And if you boys get too tired, then I guess I’ll just have to grow giant arms and row for you.”

The marines grinned sheepishly.

“What about the Eranians?” Lycus asked. “If the aether hasn’t reached Stamballa yet, they might try to capture us to find out what’s going on. There’s only six of us, sir, and we’re low on ammunition. We can’t take on anything too big.”

“I know.” Tycho turned to squint across the water to the bright lights of Stamballa on the far shore.

What the hell happened to Salvator? It’s not like Radu to take a messenger hostage, let alone kill him. He’s too refined, too proud, too honorable. And besides, he knows it’s something that his brother would definitely do, which is all the more reason for him not to. So where is that smug Italian?

“Change of plan. No one wants to row up the Strait all night, do you?” Tycho pointed at the distant lights. “We cross the channel and have a little chat with our friends over there.”

“Sir?” Lycus winced. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I’m still one of the Duchess’s ambassadors. I have every right to talk to them on her behalf, and every right to an armed escort. And how can they possibly object to six young men in wet rags?”

Lycus didn’t smile. “We can’t protect you from the Turks with these empty guns and a handful of knives for very long, sir.”

“You don’t need to worry about that.” Tycho eyed the billowing cloud of aether slowly expanding across the Strait from the Seraglio Point. “I have a feeling that tonight, the Turks will be the least of our enemies.”

The boys at the oars set to work and the two dories slowly crept across the Strait. The bright shore of Stamballa grew closer and clearer, and the dark shore of Constantia slowly faded into the shadows and mist, punctuated by distant screams of terror.

The crossing was quiet and clear until they reached the center of the channel and saw a small ironclad gunboat puttering toward them from the east. Tycho told the boys to go on rowing and so they were well into Eranian waters when the gunboat drew near and a small but bright lantern cast its light on the two small boats. But when it did, Tycho was already standing in the bow with his empty hands raised in greeting.

“Good evening,” he called out in Eranian. “I am Major Tycho Xenakis en route to meet with my colleague Salvator Fabris, who is currently a guest of the holy prince.” He deliberately avoided using Radu’s name, just in case his marines had not yet heard the rumor that the Vlachian lord now commanded the Turks. The last thing he needed was more friction between his Hellans and Vlad’s northerners.

“You will follow us to port,” a man yelled down from the gunboat, and the lantern switched off.

Tycho nodded at Lycus and the others, and they proceeded to row toward the Turkish shore with the gunboat growling along beside him. He could see the sailors on its deck, each one with the distinctive outline of a Numidian rifle slung over his shoulder.

As they reached the dock, Tycho whispered to the marines, “Whatever you do, you all need to act like my official escorts. You don’t speak to anyone but me. You don’t even look at anyone but me. And you damn sure don’t give up your weapons to anyone at all.”

“Yes sir,” the youths answered.

They tied up the dories at the bottom of the pier as the gunboat idled behind them and two dozen young Eranian soldiers trooped down to the water to meet them. Their commander said, “Major Xenakis, we were not expecting you. Your men will surrender their weapons and we will escort you to the embassy for the remainder of the night. I understand that the holy prince is quite busy this evening, so it is unlikely he will see you before the morning.”

Tycho climbed up onto the pier and the marines scrambled up beside him in two crooked lines, all with blank stares. “My men will be keeping their weapons, as per usual, and you will take me to see the prince immediately. We have a crisis on our hands, sir, and if something isn’t done about it this very hour, a great many people are going to die.”

“That isn’t my decision to make,” the officer said.

“Then let me make it for you,” Tycho said. “You’re stationed here at the waterfront. When the fighting begins, if the fighting begins, the first area to be shelled into oblivion on both sides will be where, exactly?”

The Turk frowned. “I will see what I can do, major.”

“Thank you.”

The Turks escorted the Hellans through the brightly lit streets of Stamballa, between houses full of clinking plates and glasses where voices laughed and sang. Tycho frowned at each one in turn.

Constantia should be like this right now, instead of a shrieking tomb.

The walk was long and hard as much of it was uphill, but Tycho struggled along as quickly as his legs would allow and his marines, God bless them, kept their own pace to match his, which in turn forced the Turks to keep theirs.