“The palace.”
Cricket was already ahead of me, racing her pony over the cobblestones. I tucked in after her, studying the towers Fallon had built around his home. As we drew nearer I noticed them crowded with soldiers. A contingent milled inside the gate, coming to life as they heard us. They signaled our approach, but not a single bowman tilted toward us. I heard my name above the din, then a cry to let us enter. The shocked faces of the soldiers greeted us as we stopped to let the giant gates swing wide.
“Lukien!” cried a man who took my horse. Another grabbed my hand. Cricket jostled her pony through the swarm. Not only soldiers crammed the palace but townsfolk and their children, too.
“What’s happening?” I asked. I looked around for a friendly face, but they were all strangers to me. “Where’s Marilius?”
A one-handed man with a dented helmet pushed toward me through the crowd. “You’re back too late! It’s done and over!”
“What is?”
“You had hours! You come now?”
I dismounted, jumping down in front of him. “Was it the monster?”
“Yes! Your monster, Liirian. The one you were supposed to kill!”
“Mine?” I pushed the man so hard he tumbled. “Where’s Marilius? Someone bloody tell me!”
The noise stopped, and all their ghastly faces stared at me. Cricket got down from her pony to stand beside me.
“What’s wrong with you all?” I shouted. “You’re all struck stupid suddenly?”
“Lukien.”
A man came toward us from the edge of the yard. It took a moment for me to realize it was Marilius. He was almost staggering, favoring a bandaged leg and supporting himself with a homemade cane. Blood spattered his arms and cape, even his face. The breath he took rattled from his lungs. Cricket raced to help him.
“Marilius!” She wrapped herself around his arm. “What happened?”
“Last night,” said Marilius. He could barely catch his breath. “In the hall.”
“Fallon?” I asked.
“Alive.”
I couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disgusted. He let Cricket help him back toward the palace entrance, wincing with every step. “It was almost dawn by the time it came. Half of us were asleep. The gate, the towers. . bloody useless. No one even saw it until it was near the hall.”
“What’d it look like, Marilius?”
Marilius shook his head. “I can’t even describe it. Like a sack of old skins. Animals, people. . it wasn’t bones this time. Just skins, like it was wearing them.”
“Mother-whore. But it didn’t reach Fallon?”
“A damn miracle,” said Marilius. “The men tossed themselves at it. We couldn’t get out of the hall. We were trapped. You need to see for yourself.”
We walked into the palace, past all the shocked soldiers and shopkeepers and confused little kids, deep into the wing where I’d last seen Fallon. Another group of soldiers stood guard just outside the great hall. Marilius waved them away. The noise of the crowds dropped off behind us as we rounded the corner and the hall echoed before us. Sunlight gushed in from the towering windows, touching the golden pillars and alabaster tiles and human wreckage.
Cricket gasped.
“Oh, Fate. .” I stepped around to block her way. “Marilius, take her out of here.”
Cricket pushed me off. “No!”
“I don’t want you here,” I said, but it was too late anyway. She’d already seen it.
The hall looked like a battlefield, the kind I’d seen a hundred times. Dozens of corpses spread out along the floor, some with horror-stricken faces, others with their heads caved in. Men with sliced bellies and missing limbs lay atop each other, oozing stomach juices across the polished tiles. Blood trickled down the walls and dripped from the ceiling. A pair of arms hung from a chandelier, the dead fingers still clutching the wrought iron. A shattered fountain in the center of the hall spread water and dead goldfish over the tiles. Every gentle statue had been toppled. Down at my feet an eyeball sloshed. I kicked it aside before Cricket could see it.
It was an image of hell, worse than the painting of Gahoreth. Next to me, Marilius made a whimpering noise. Amazingly, Cricket found the guts to put her arm around him. She didn’t even look away.
Guts, I thought proudly.
“They didn’t break,” said Marilius. “They stayed. All the way until the sun came up.”
“What happened to it, Marilius?” I asked. I’d hoped to see the monster laying dead among the mercenaries. “Did you wound it at least? How’d you drive it off?”
Marilius pointed to the giant windows. “The sun drove it off, not us. Once the light came it ran.”
“Ran? Where?”
“How should I know? We didn’t go after it! Fuck, Lukien, look around! It’s unstoppable!”
“But it stopped,” I mused. I looked back down the hall. No one had tried to keep it from escaping. I turned to see the other end of the hall where Fallon’s private chamber waited. The door was open, but I was sure it had been locked up tight last night. “So you were trapped in here, guarding him. Is he in there?”
“He won’t come out,” said Marilius. “I can’t even get him to talk to me.”
“He has to talk,” I said. “Now.”
I trekked straight through the hall, over the pools of blood and stinking entrails, heading for Fallon. Marilius called at me to stop.
“Forget it,” I snapped. “He’s got more troubles then he knows.”
I reached the chamber and peered inside. The room was just the same as I’d left it days ago. Only now Fallon looked worse. He’d obviously sniffed up all his purple spice, because only the residue of it stained the table. Fallon had his head down and his arms spread out across the tabletop. I thought he was asleep until he turned his bloodshot eyes to face me. He’d been weeping. Trails of dried tears streaked his dirty face. I pictured him cowering in his sanctuary while his men were ripped to shreds just beyond the door. Surprisingly, I pitied him.
“You came back,” he whispered. He smiled without a trace of joy. “What does it want, Lukien? Why won’t it leave me alone?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said.
“Did you go to Diriel?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“I was right about him, wasn’t I?”
“You were right,” I admitted. “All of Akyre’s an asylum.” Cricket and Marilius finally came up behind me in the threshold. I stepped into Fallon’s sanctuary. “He’s coming after you, Anton,” I said. “He’s got an army. The Legion of the Lost. He gave us seven days to make ready. That was three days ago.”
Fallon didn’t bother lifting his cheek off the dirty table. “I don’t have his money.”
“He knows that,” I said. “It’s not the money he wants. It’s you. And he wants the monster. He thinks I can get it for him. I told him I would, to buy some time. You need to get ready, get your men ready.”
Marilius asked, “Lukien, are you bloody blind? We can’t fight an army!”
“You are an army!” I shouted back. “You’re soldiers. It’s time to fight-men this time, not monsters.”
“Men that are monsters, you mean,” said Marilius. “You saw them yourself. They’re not human anymore.”
“They can be killed, and we’re going to kill them,” I argued. “So they have no souls, so what? They have bodies and bodies can die.”
“It’s hopeless,” groaned Fallon. “We can’t fight them. We don’t have enough men.”
I went and stooped down to face him. “Anton, listen to me. Diriel doesn’t have a regular army, not the way a country does. They’re a mismatched group of soldiers and sheep herders, and not all of them have used the mummia. His country’s a wasteland. He can’t even feed an army. They get one shot at this. We drive them back, and they’re finished.”
Fallon managed to lift himself up. “A hundred men are dead out there,” he said as he pointed to the hall. “Can’t you smell that? That blood? Maybe more than a hundred. I can’t even tell because they’re in pieces!”