With a wet, slurping gush, a large black bundle slipped out of the inside of the tree.
And lunged straight at me.
Guillaume slammed the kukri down on the man-shaped bundle. An outer membrane tore and gave way, revealing Zharr’s face, now canted sideways by a nearly severed spine. Slime coated his hair and face. His mouth moved, and just enough of his vocal cords remained for him to scream.
“ISADOR!”
The sphinx and ushi-oni engulfed him. Sekh from the top, gulping him down. Vore from the bottom, hacking him in half. Gobbled. Swallowed. Gone. In a matter of seconds.
Heart pounding, I gasped out, “What the fuck just happened?”
“Conjecture only,” Guillaume said evenly, not even breathing hard as he wiped the blade on a clump of grass and checked its edge. “They were converted after Thierry, which means the Dauphine might have made use of additional Isador blood in her leeches to fine tune their programming. They weren’t needed to run a young, unprotected queen to ground, not like Greyson. She tried that and failed, not once but twice. So these were ordered to kill the Isador queen on sight.”
It made sense. I could sort through the residual magic lingering in the Dauphine’s blood and see if that was true, but I just didn’t have the stomach.
Speaking of stomach… Vore turned aside and spewed black sludge out onto the ground, making sure not to splash any of us. The rotten odor was bad, horrible actually, but his reaction surprised me. Especially after he’d chowed down on thralls earlier.
His heavy bull shoulders heaved as he expelled the taint. Concerned, I pierced my wrist, readying my blood so I could heal him. Burn the Dauphine’s taint out of him. Whatever he needed.
The tree beside Zharr’s burst open. Splinters and chunks of cypress tree exploded into projectiles. Rik twisted around, shielding both me and Lew with his massive troll’s back. I couldn’t see with my eyes, but I saw through Guillaume’s bond. In slow motion, he brought the heavy kukri down with both hands. The forked-looking thing coming out of the tree didn’t make sense to me—until I realized he must have been put in upside down.
Guillaume’s blade hit him in the pelvis and split him nearly in half.
Never mind the stone sphinx weighed as much as a small pyramid. He lunged just as fast as the thrall coming out of the tree, snagging one half of the body as it started to fall apart. With a vicious shake of his head, he finished the job Guillaume began. Since Vore was still regurgitating, Sekh chowed down on the second half too.
“Isador blood.” This time, Guillaume was breathing a little harder, though his voice was still easy enough to laugh. “Next time, a little warning before you bleed, my queen.”
“Sorry,” I said faintly. “I thought Vore needed healing.”
:I’m fine, my queen,:Vore said.:I’m expelling the Dauphine’s blood so I don’t carry any part of her. I can’t dissolve her completely like the general. I didn’t think you wanted any of us to have any trace of her taint inside us.:
“True,” I admitted. “I can burn her out of you if you have any doubts.”
He heaved again and spit out a black glob.:I have eliminated every trace of her from my system.:
We moved to the opposite side of the small nest to the last two standing cypresses.
Braced for a rapid attack, Sekh took up position between me and the first tree. Guillaume tried to hack the tree open, but the wood was so rotten that he ended up using the flat of the blade to simply pull the softened bark out of the way. Even the weirdsack thing had dissolved, and only thick sludge dripped out with a few strips of what might have been skin. Some thicker chunks of powdery bones drenched in thick, smelly tar.
A flutter of wings. Flopping and struggling in the gooey disgusting filth. Still alive. After all this time. Even without a real body any longer.
With my power, I reached into the sticky mess and freed his spirit. A large eagle staggered out of the black sludge, shaking out its feathers. Black and gray with an impressive wingspan.
“Vaughn’s beast was a hippogryph,” Lew whispered. “Of course his spirit would be an eagle.”
Sekh stepped aside, and I knelt on the ground. Lew dropped down beside me as the eagle hopped closer to us, making low chirping sounds, its head bobbing excitedly.
“Yes, she did it.” Raggedly, Lew laughed. “Our queen had her heir, and she’s every ounce the queen we dreamed of.”
Crying, I stroked the eagle’s proud head. He bumped against my hand, demanding pets like a dog, but the sounds he made were more like a purring cat.
“Thank you, Vaughn.” My throat ached, razor blades slicing deep. But I made myself smile. “Esetta’s waiting for you.”
He made a low whistle, his head tilting to the side. I hadn’t given him any of my blood, but I didn’t need Lew to translate for me. “I’m sorry, I can’t resurrect you. I can’t undo what the Dauphine did, other than free you.”
Vaughn’s eagle hopped closer and then fluttered up to sit on my shoulder. His talons dug in, his weight catching me by surprise, but I didn’t mind. Not in the slightest.
Guillaume finished tearing the other tree apart, allowing its contents to pour out. The same as Vaughn, the other Isador Blood had been dissolved into basically nothing except bits and pieces… and his spirit, a blue-black bird with a giant eye on the center of his head. I thought he was some kind of cyclops bird like Mallac, until he turned his head and I realized the “eye” was just a spot on the back of his head.
