Glenda ascended the foggy slope, her armour draped with the gleaming white robes of Order. At her sides marched elven relatives, and at her back, the forces of humanity. Constructs gnashed from all sides with creaking branch-limbs and flashes of infernal flame, but the troops were in high spirits. Men shouted insults as they hacked into living wood, and Glenda herself laughed, swinging her halberd into the dog-faced thing that erupted from the fog ahead.
“It’s time to turn the tide,” she called, the purity of her voice ringing like a church bell. “Raise it, raise it now!”
Behind her, a pair of knights ripped the stained cloth off their jointly carried cargo and, lowering the pike’s end to stabilize it in the dirt, hoisted the impaled thing into theair. A maroon glob of congealed liquid dripped onto Glenda’s shoulder.
Around them in the fog, constructs began to howl.
“Sir Cameron asked me to pass along a message,” Glenda shouted, smiling, and she told them.
CHAPTER 27
In Which Nothing.
CHAPTER 28
Nothing.
CHAPTER 29
In Which Glenda Knows that She Will Be a Figure of Legend, a Story Told to Children, the Noble Elf Who Brought the Mad Sorcerer to Heel. In Which She Has Never Been So Assured of Her Own Goodness and Honour.
Never before had the Knights of Order reached the castle.
The men sang hymns, joyous expulsions as they battered the crawling, snapping evil of the sorcerer’s servants. It had shaken them all, the sheer number of constructs clinging to the castle walls and battlements, but something vital had left their enemy. The constructs fought mechanically, stupidly, with none of the clever stratagems of old. And none of the anticipated spells descended; the air did not boil, nor turn poisonous, nor thicken to a gel.
Several times, they triggered hidden pentagrams etched into the stony ground, which revealed their designs with a pulse of light, readying a terrible force—only to dim and fade when no magic flowed into them.
The sorcerer was not fighting back.
The forces of Order, an enormous number of men gathered for this final push, overwhelmed the wooden monstrositieswith growing confidence, leaving nothing but twitching splinters in their wake.
With the front gates bashed open, new threats emerged from the courtyard: gigantic piscine constructs that writhed open-mouthed along the ground. An unlucky mercenary, transfixed by the sight, disappeared in a single snap, his feet protruding comically from the creature’s mouth.
Leaving this development to the humans, Glenda skipped ahead with her elven kin. They broke through the final door and danced down the stone halls, light on their feet despite their armour, as playful and elegant as hunting cats. In preparation for fighting at close quarters, Glenda set aside her halberd, instead drawing the sword she’d used to take Cameron’s life.
The elves split from one another, each loping down a different corridor. Squeezing reckless performance from muscles that, after the day’s exertion, now ran solely on adrenaline, Glenda dodged the swing of construct scythes and the grope of twiggy claws, hunting for the sound of breathing, footsteps, any noise a man might make. Finally, she heard it: the scrape of chalk on stone.
Glenda smashed through the door ahead of her and crouched, sword brandished, her eyes wide with fear and pleasure.
“You must be Glenda,” said the bent and hollow man. He stood in the center of a complex chalk diagram that seemed to bend and warp under her eyes. “Are you the one who did it? Did you use that sword? Never mind.” The man glanced down at his work, and his mouth stretched into something that might loosely be considered a smile. “Don’t answer. It’s already too late.”
Screaming aloud to quell her unease, Glenda rushed the sorcerer, impaling him on her . . . except the sword didn’t go through. It glanced off him with a reverberation that jarred her elbow. A cut in the fabric, revealing sickly white skin, was the only sign she’d made contact.
Shouting, summoning the reserves of her magic to coat the blade in holy light, Glenda swung at the man again. A shallow red line opened across his torso, droplets flying off the sword to spatter the chalk diagram. Glenda stepped back, panting, as the mad sorcerer threw back his head and laughed. The sound, hacking and without humour, sent ice down her spine.
“Do you know,” the man asked, as Glenda backed away, “what the final ingredient is for this spell?” She reached the doorway just as the pentacle began to glow. “It’s dragon blood.”
The room flashed.
CHAPTER 30
In Which I Am Something. In Which Oh God, Tell Me That Didn’t Really Happen, Tell Me I Wasn’t, Tell Me She Didn’t, Tell Me—
It doesn’t have to happen today, Cameron. There’s so much we can learn, and I’m sure the Elders would keep you in comfort for the—” Glenda blinked her overlarge eyes. “Huh. I . . . that damned man!”
“You—you killed me.” The words came without any semblance of control. “You killed me, I died, you killed me—”
“Yes, and used your corpse as a flag,” she snapped. Knights milled about the meadow, confused. Had any of them also returned from death?
