Into Eternity (The Eternals Book 3) Page 15

  “At least one Nordic lies ahead.”

  “Be more specific. Grella is not in the castle and his youngest sister does not and never will bathe of the lavender death.”

  “I thought you'd forgotten her.”

  “I never forget anyone, old bean,” he grinned.

  I sniffed at the air but deciphered nothing new.

  “Think. Use your brain, Jean, your instincts. Use the gifts bequeathed you. How far are we from the castle? Could the smell of lavender carry that distance? If not, what could?”

  “Many Nordics.”

  “Yes, but think bigger, more lavender still,” Merryweather suggested.

  “As in a craft steeped in it from exposure to the Nordics' sickly sweet domain.”

  “Exactly! That is exactly correct.”

  “So, the Super-Zeppelin is here.”

  “It is, Jean. That information coupled with the clouds, or wake, we witnessed, never mind the flower, tells us all we need to know. Yet the wind tells us even more.”

  “The direction the scent emits from.”

  “Yes, my friend. Like I said before, it is a north wind that blows. We know what, where and whom we are dealing with.”

  “They've herded us, so they'll know what direction we'll approach from.”

  “Correct to a point.”

  “To a point?”

  “They know the direction they think we'll approach from.”

  “So come from another.”

  “Now you're thinking like a proper hunter.”

  “But the castle is on cliffs with a path running around three-quarters of it. The southernmost points in our direction and has the widest surface. It is also the way whence we came, and a sure point to head for. That is where they shall expect us. They will anticipate us coming from the south even if it is to intercept our entry through the north gate.”

  “So?”

  “I see no other way to elude them.”

  “You cannot see the obvious, that which lies before your face, dear boy,” Merryweather cooed.

  I fast approached the point of my former frustrations and was about to let off steam when he nodded to our left. I followed his line.

  “The remains of the river. But that does not lead to the castle,” I stated.

  “No, it leads to the sea.”

  “But the sea has disappeared.”

  “So a hydrophobe should have no problem in following the river's course to that dried up sea and climbing the cliffs to the castle in a way he could normally not”

  “I like your thinking.”

  “So do I,” he chuckled. “Let's go.”

  * * *

  We slunk across the exposed rock doing our best to remain hidden where we could and slipped over the edge of the dried up riverbank like two scampering lizards. With a drop of less than ten feet, we were in the river basin, which was even drier than the Baltic sea had been and tracing its course at a decent speed. The rocks that led to the plateau bearing Gorgon's castle reared ever upward with every step we took. They obscured us. Good.

  The riverbed opened out in gradual increments until it was close to a half-mile wide. There, where once turbulent tides would have met fresh, pouring water, we skulked across the seabed and stared out at more of our cousin's remains.

  “Even more morbid when you think Gorgon used to look out upon these remnants of our once great community daily, don't you think?” Merryweather paused to take in the endless bones of the past.

  “I'd already considered that, but he always struck me as though it wouldn't have bothered him in the slightest.”

  “Ah, but he has changed.”

  “I think humanity said it best with can a leopard change its spots.”

  “In what must be some kind of record for us, I completely agree.”

  And a second bombshell hit. My expression must have given me away.

  “Like I said, dear boy, use your brain and trust your instincts.”

  “You suggest we are deceived.”

  “It is a possibility. That is all. Just remember it when we stick our heads up over the parapet, so to speak.” He pointed to the towering cliffs before us.

  We climbed with greater stealth than I should've afforded thanks to Walter's advice. Despite my yearning to scramble up at speed and leap upon whoever stood in our way, I did not. I ascended in a considered manner, silent and thoughtful. Walter did likewise although I doubted we dwelled on the same problems.

  I was dirty, frustrated, but not tired when we popped our heads over Walter's aforementioned parapet.

  “That's a dirty trick even for the Marquis,” Merryweather sniffed.

  It was, too. The Marquis had moored the Super-Zeppelin against the palace's western edge. A ramp of sorts that extended from its dangling cabin, reached across the divide between it and Gorgon's domain. It was clever, brilliant even. It meant the great behemoth hadn't had to land. Almost fully concealed by the furthest side of the palace, yet still a good thirty feet from the ground it would have remained unseen to Merryweather and myself from almost any other angle of entry. A well-planned staging post for treachery.

  “That's an awful lot of trouble to go to just to avoid you and I.”

  “I doubt the I, as in me, has anything to do with it. After all, Jean, it is a well-known fact you hate my guts. There's only one person they seek to deceive, and it's not little old me.” Merryweather ran slim fingers through his unruly mop of blond hair, then scratched his chin. “Look, they've even left the gate unguarded.”

  “Ready for predictable me to go charging into the unknown,” I mused.

  “The old you,” Merryweather corrected.

  “On this occasion, we are in agreement.”

  “Hang on. Did you just say I was right for a second time?”

  “I insinuated at a proviso.”

  “I don't care; I've already forgotten it.”

  “All right, no need to gloat.” My words were already spoken too late.

  Merryweather, all agleam with delight, hopped over the cliff edge onto the small plateau and danced a merry jig. He kicked up so much loose dust in the doing so I thought him more akin to a sand devil.

  “Jean and I agree-ing, Jean and I agree-ing,” he sang like a demented crooner.

  “Shush!” I hissed. But Merryweather was already away with the faeries. He hopped his way in remorseless excess towards the Marquis' craft.

  I prayed he might be having one of his moments, that he'd come to his senses at any second. He did not. Instead, like the legendary Pied Piper jigging his way to the river, although in this case towards something altogether more dangerous than rats, he danced his way to the airship's underbelly.

  “Come on then!” he called over.

  “Shut up!” I hissed back.

  “Don't worry, they're all in there,” he said, with a thumb directed towards the palace.

  “Aren't you the one who advised caution?”

  But before he could reply a figure clad in a blue and yellow tunic peeped over the edge of the Zeppelin's boarding ramp. I was off like a shot.

  In less than a thought, I'd covered the ground between myself and Merryweather and used the dandy as a fulcrum to aid my leap. I careened through the air with a certain devastating grace landing just behind my gawping companion, a Baltic's head held in my hands.

  “Good grief!” Merryweather mewled. “Remind me to never get you mad at me.”

  “I'm always mad at you.”

  “You don't mean that. I'm invaluable to your daily routine.”

  “I have no routine.”

  “Of course you do: wake; get angry; kill something; moan a lot; woo someone; go back to sleep. I'll grant you the order may vary, but otherwise, it's as sure as the day is long.”

  “I'm glad my so-called routine is of such interest to you.”

  “Always has been,” he said, as he leapt to the ramp above.

  Seeing no more guards secreted in the vicinity, the pair of us hopped over the palace batt
lements and peeped down into the courtyard below: deserted. I was about to leap to the ground when Merryweather caught my sleeve, shook his head, and towed me off around the palace perimeter. Unhindered, we slunk beneath the stone parapet, Merryweather holding his back and bemoaning his posture, until we crossed over to the palace true. There, I unpicked a window with one long talon, much to my companion's impressed nodding, and entered the darkness beyond.

  “This way,” said Merryweather.

  He seemed to know what he was doing, so I followed. We snuck down a long corridor, around two bends, and out into a wider hall ending in a large, ornate door. Merryweather tried the handle, then tutted at it being locked. I was about to set my shoulder to it, when my companion shook his head in a furious fashion, reached deep into his clothing and extracted a peculiarly shaped piece of metal.

  “I have a master key,” Merryweather winked in an exaggerated fashion.

  I shook my head and allowed him to fiddle about with the lock until it clicked. With the stealth of a true hunter, Merryweather turned the handle. We were through.

  We tiptoed out onto the balcony that had housed Gorgon's orchestra in the main hall. Fortune favoured us; it was empty. I then had the Britannian to thank again as he covered my gasp with a firm hand across my mouth. For they were there so far below us, all of them, every last one.

  Chapter Seventeen

  -

  Charred

  “He should be here by now.” The voice wheezed like a deflating balloon, a last expenditure of precious air.

  “He will, Your Highness.” The Marquis grovelled before his queen, so low that his bulbous belly brushed the floor.

  “He hassss accesssss?”

  “Unhindered.”

  “Good, good,” said Chantelle. Her charred fingers tapped the arms of Gorgon's throne like twigs, wood on wood.

  “How many guardssss?”

  “Fifty within the room, a hundred without. In fact, all save the one who watches your ship.” Duke Gorgon shifted uneasily in his overly small seat.

  “You are certain?” Chantelle hissed, to no one in particular.

  “Yes.” An almost inaudible acknowledgement, cold even, like a dawn frost on a dead meadow.

  “Who?” I mouthed to Merryweather. He silenced me with a finger to the lips.

  “You know hissss importance. I want no mistakessss.”

  “Then, why the guards, they might kill him?”

  “They will not. This must look believable. Jean is no fool in such matters. Not that big a fool, anyway. It might even be fun to see him bleed just a little, don't you think?”

  “How can you be so certain?” Gorgon pressed. “How can you know?”

  “I know.”

  Chantelle raised herself with a creak of protesting limbs and flicked the wedding veil from her face. With mannequin strides, she paced the floor taking in each individual therein. I did the same.

  There was, of course, the aforementioned three: Queen Chantelle, Duke Gorgon, and the Marquis, but there were others, too. Leant against the far wall beneath a regal tapestry of the Eternals of old looking rather less well for wear was Raphael. If it were possible for our kind to appear beyond the point of death, he did. Raphael's normal seedy demeanour, one that had always appealed to equally seedy females, was gone, displaced, a flake of a man, crestfallen and broken, remained. His head hung low, his arms limp at his sides and his tanned skin rather less than the bronzed god and more tarnished tabletop. He was a weak and pitiful fool. Good, he deserved it. But it was the furthest corner of the room that glowed in pale, pearlescent tints that held my gaze. There, set apart from the others, the Baltic Guard taking great pains to put distance between themselves and the shimmering ones, were the Nordics. Narina, head held high, stood before Verstra, but not Serstra, and he further still before his mother. Queen Serena studied the chamber walls with acute distaste written all over her face. It was only when she looked down did I notice someone bound at her feet.

  I had seen many cruelties performed and been the arbiter of many myself, but most were savage for savageness's sake; this was something else. The tiny figure was unidentifiable, anything from a deer to a dog. Crouched, the beast bore strands of long hair plastered to its back, which erred towards humanity, but ravaged and patchy. The more I looked, the more I became convinced of sentient life, but it was difficult to confirm: there was so much blood, so much spilled crimson. And no matter how hard I studied each corner of the hall, no matter how much I prayed, Linka was nowhere to be found. My heart spasmed as though it lived and died again in less than a breath, my stomach twisting like the worms in a dead rat's mouth.

  When I turned to seek Merryweather's opinion, the dandy had vanished. On the one hand, I was unsurprised, in another disappointed. Either way, I felt more alone than ever in my five long centuries of existence.

  “You should send someone to seek him.” Chantelle addressed the cowering Marquis.

  “That would require opening the throne room door.”

  “Are you so scared of one man?”

  “No,” came that same disembodied voice. “I will go look.”

  Gorgon twitched as Chantelle's wicked face cracked a smile.

  “Will you now?”

  “If you would wish it, yes, mistress.”

  I strained every auditory sense to place that accented voice; Italian if I wasn't mistaken.

  “Come, child,” Chantelle's broken voice oozed sincerity, yet promised none.

  The pile of blood stirred. A cowering, crimson shell of a once beauty shivered to a stooped position. Small, bare feet splattered forward across the stone floor like a person stepping from a bath, but there was no water in the great hall, only blood. When Violante looked up to her tormentor's face, I had to turn away.

  “You have done so much already, Violante. You informed me of our foe's arrival and everything in-between. I cannot ask any more of you. It would not be fair.”

  “But, I want to help. I want to make Jean pay.” Her frail voice begged as it broke.

  “Tsk! Tsk! It does not befit a Lady to plead in her own court.”

  “But…”

  “I will hear no more of it.”

  Chantelle closed the distance between her and Violante in a charcoal blur offering a grey hand to the ruined creature. Violante took it in her shaking own and allowed herself to be drawn to the bosom of the beast. Chantelle's broken hand stroked the blood from those violet eyes with the creaking rhythm of a windswept boat. It turned my stomach. The would-be queen gargled some sick, cooing noise meant to soothe the child. It did not. Violante shook all the more. The demoness creaked low to whisper something in the girl's ear, bolted back upright to sniff the air, her head juddering from side to side, then continued to toy with her prey.

  “Once, not so very long ago, I had a sister like you. She, too, was pretty and weak. She killed my mother, don't you know. A despicable act committed by a despicable heart. And rather like you, my dear, she had the most divine eyes. Bejewelled said some, beautiful said others. I always envied her eyes. For years, I wished they were mine.”

  Chantelle's fingertips squelched into Violante's skull. When they withdrew as two violet-tipped talons, I wretched. I could not help it and I did not care who heard. Only Gorgon's bellowed “NO!” saved my being revealed.

  I wanted to leap down and tear her head from her shoulders, to stamp on her rotten corpse, to kill her a million times over, then a million times more. I wished to drag her to Hell and personally tie her to Mephistopheles' torture table. But I couldn't, for I could not show myself. Not for me, as the Jean of old would have done, but for Linka. For I knew that until she was safe, they had me. I had to remain motionless. So, I did, although it was a stain on my immortal non-soul.

  Violante fell to the floor too weak to scream and unable to cry. Her father did that for her although he remained where Chantelle had commanded. A wise decision.

  “Was that really necessary?” Narina spoke where others would no
t. Her iced tones cut straight to her intended target.

  “I think so, yessss,” Chantelle wheezed. “I hate the weak.”

  “You disgust me!” Narina spat in a most un-Nordic-like way.

  And for a moment, I thought Chantelle might have a revolt on her hands. But, she did not, as Narina span away.

  I couldn't help wondering what hold she had over so powerful a coven? What gave her that edge?

  I turned to the door Walter and I had entered through. It still stood ajar, the dandy nowhere in sight, his space vacated. He was not coming back.

  So, like a mouse, I prepared to scurry away. The sound of ragged sniffing made me pause. The voice that followed made me shake.

  “Ah, monsieur, I'm so glad you've arrived.”

  The essence of lavender pooled from that open doorway and I suspected myself revealed. But whereas a past me should have stood ebullient and defiant, I did not. Instead, I crept to the balcony edge and peeped like a naughty child refusing detection in a game of hide-and-seek. Good job, too. For as I squinted through the ornate furnishings and carved stone, the assembly did the same. All except for Raphael and Serena gave surreptitious attention to each corner, each dark aspect of the great chamber, and not one of them looked my way. All went silent. It was undecided who hunted whom.

  “He is not here, Your Highness.”

  “Quiet.”

  “I'm telling you, he isn't here.”

  “Be still.”

  “Jean could no longer hold his tongue than could Merryweather his simpering.”

  There was a polar stirring in the corner of the chamber. The Arctic churned.

  “Hush,” said Chantelle. Her head rotated on her neck like a broken owl. She searched but could not find.

  “You're wasting your time,” the Marquis slapped his porky hands together in dismissive fashion.

  “Silence, Vincent, you snivelling wretch,” Chantelle scalded.

  “Vincent! You kept that quiet,” Verstra chuckled.

  “How's your brother? Oh, that's right, boy, he's dead.” The Marquis licked the spittle from his slug-like lips.

  The Nordic response came as a blizzard, polar winters unfolding like an immense Arctic storm from the corner of the room. A maelstrom of snow and ice, Serena closed the distance between her and her son's tormentor. And if I had never beheld the Marquis displaying true fear, I did then. His face flushed from pompous, to shocked, to terrified.