The queen stepped to a window and looked along the top of the castle wall. Several guards gathered around a motionless shape-a body, she sensed, as if she could feel the warmth of blood pooling around the form. A body that lay outside the door closest to the royal chambers … closest to Deirdre's room!
A sense of urgency infused Robyn Kendrick, and she returned to her daughter's door. The High Queen placed the palms of her hands flat against the door. She cast a simple enchantment, and the wooden panels flared warm to her touch.
Magic! Something arcane protected the door, or the room within, and this was enough for the High Queen.
"Arqueous telemite!" she cried, drawing upon the power of her goddess. Her hands pressed against the wood, seizing the essence of the trees that the Earthmother had grown, taking the firm grain and straight lines and warping those shapes in the name of Robyn's own magic.
The spell twisted the solid planks that formed the door, warping them so powerfully that they popped free from the iron bands confining them. With rending shrieks, the hinges tore from the walls of stone, leaving the doorway to the room blocked only by a tangle of twisted wreckage.
Pulling sharply against the planks, Robyn broke the pieces away with two quick tugs. In another moment, she stepped through the entrance, seeing immediately that Deirdre was not in her bed.
A glimmer of candlelight in the adjoining parlor caught her eye, and Robyn raced through the bedroom, noticing that her footsteps made no noise even as she kicked pieces of the door out of her path. She understood immediately that Deirdre had concealed the room beneath a magical spell of silence, a fact that only increased her sense of alarm.
She pushed through the hanging curtain dividing the parlor from the sleeping chamber, and for a moment, she saw Deirdre before her. The queen's younger daughter sat in a trancelike silence, her eyes closed, her hands clasped on her knees before her. Several pairs of candles flamed about the room, flickering from the wind of Robyn's entry. Four platters sat on the floor before her-shallow bowls of dark, thick liquid. The pungent smell of fresh blood assaulted the High Queen's nostrils.
Still, unnaturally, there was no sound. Robyn opened her mouth, demanding Deirdre's attention, but no words emerged-and the princess remained inert and entranced.
Then the candles flared brightly, the tiny flames surging upward to illuminate the room with a brightness like sunlight. Robyn felt as though she were mired in mud, watching her daughter's face, cold and icily aloof, etched in the detail of the clear white light.
"No!" screamed the queen, the spell of silence swallowing the sound but not the icy fear that gripped her heart.
In the next instant, Deirdre disappeared.
The princess flew, lending herself to the wings of magic and the power of unknown gods. Plunging through the space of ether, she traveled with dizzying speed through a whirl of colors and chaotic noise. She rode the void like the wild wind, feeling the blessings of a multitude of gods, growing steadily in might and power… and ambition.
The pulse of godhood thundered in her veins, carried through the artifact of Talos, the shards of mirror that had become part of her body and made of her so much more than she had been.
She felt the hand of a storming god clasping her own, and then those daggers of glass within her flared into light. Deirdre glowed like a sky speckled with stars, her flesh the cold night and the gleaming points of light coming from the immortal artifact that had torn into her flesh.
But not rending her-no, not at all. There had been no wound, no pain, when those fragments had pierced her. Now, for the first time, she understood that it had not been an assault against her.
In fact, it was the mirror of Talos that had made her whole.
11
Tristan's sword flashed in his hand the instant he saw the springing trolls. Even so, he barely raised the blade as the first of the beasts reached wicked talons toward his leg. Chopping frantically, he hacked at the monster's wrists, sending it scuttling backward with a shriek of pain.
A pair of trolls closed from his left, and he lowered his shield. The buckler's tight straps, modified to secure it to his handless arm, held firm as he bashed the shield firmly into the face of the first troll. The second monster stumbled to the ground, borne downward by the leaping Ranthal. The great moorhound locked his jaws around the troll's neck while the other dogs tore into the creature's legs.
Shallot whirled through a full circle, lashing out with his rear hooves to crush the chest of a troll leaping at them from behind. Newt had vanished, either in sudden flight or, more likely, concealed by his power of invisibility. A bark of pain from one of the trolls as tooth marks appeared in its shoulder solved that mystery.
"Go!" Tristan barked to Shallot, and the stallion sprang forward immediately. The sword flashed brightly in the sunlight, and a bleeding head flew from the body of a suddenly lurching troll. The corpse fell to the ground in a moment, growing still as dark, greenish black blood pumped from the gaping wound onto the ground.
The hounds cried out a challenge and followed, abandoning their original victim to pounce upon another pair of the monstrous humanoids. One of the dogs yelped and fell to the ground, and in a quick glance, Tristan saw the gaping wound along her side.
His sword dropped again, cleaving into the shoulder of a muscular troll. Shallot whirled away as another lunging monster narrowly missed dragging the High King from the saddle. Desperately stabbing, Tristan drove the point of his sword through the creature's face, almost losing the weapon when the troll dropped to the ground. With a powerful heave, he tore the blade from the bony wound as the stallion charged into another troll.
A ball of fire flared in the air, sending trolls scuttling away in panic, though as Tristan rode past the apparition, he could feel no heat. Newt's illusion was realistic enough to momentarily scatter the trolls, however.
Shallot trampled a troll while the hounds dragged another to the earth. Tristan's sword slashed to the right, decapitating one of the creatures as its claws raked across the king's chest and belly. Pivoting in the saddle, the man chopped to his left, scarring the face and long nose of another attacker. The stallion plunged and bucked, driving heavy hooves into the writhing body below it, and then Newt popped into sight, hovering in front of Tristan's eyes and gesturing behind him in agitation.
"Look!" cried Newt, pointing over the king's shoulder. "Look at that!"
Twisting in alarm, Tristan propelled Shallot through a quick spin. The king raised his shield to ward off the anticipated attack, but he could see no threat there! Instead, he saw the wreckage of the fight, muddy hoofprints, the dying hound, and several dead trolls, including two he'd beheaded. But no attacker menaced him.
"What is it?" he demanded, spinning back just in time to see the remaining trolls bolt into the brush.
"Look!" blurted Newt again, his face twisting in sublime frustration.
And then it struck him. Stunned, Tristan looked back again, checking carefully-and it was true! The trolls he had killed were still dead! The import slowly dawned on him.
Then he saw one of the previously slain monsters move, carefully and stealthily drawing its legs and arms beneath it.
He remembered the beast-the dogs had torn its green skin to ribbons, leaving the creature dead in a pool of fetid blood. Now it was whole again, ready to attack or flee. Tristan readied his sword, intentionally riding closer to the monster.
With an ear-stunning roar, the troll sprang from a prone position into a flying leap toward the human rider. Tristan was shocked by the power of its arms and legs, the springing speed of its leap, but that didn't stop him from bracing in his saddle and raising the shield to meet the beast with a smashing clang. Lurching backward from the impact-the troll weighed at least twice as much as the man-Tristan nevertheless chopped savagely with his sword, cleaving the grotesque face from forehead to neck. The monster fell like a dead tree, slain again.