David Farland - The Golden Queen

“It was flesh, like you or me,” Gallen said. “It put Seamus up on the horse, and I looked into its face. It … I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it.”

“But it warned men against murder,” Father Brian whispered in a tone hinting at something between confusion and awe. “It couldn’t have been in league with the devil. Therefore, it must have come from God. The thing that you saw last night,” he whispered with desperation, “could it have been an angel?”

“I don’t think so. It was dressed in black,” Gallen said.

“Then it was an angel-” Father Brian said with finality, “it was the Angel of Death, walking at the right hand of Gallen O’Day and keeping guard over him. That’s what we’ll tell people. That’s what we’ll say.”

“I’m not so sure-” Gallen started to argue, but Brian spun and grabbed Gallen’s collar at the throat. “Don’t dispute me on this! I’ll not have it said that a cousin of mine consorts with demons. Only you and the robbers saw what happened last night. No one can contradict your testimony! It was God who sent the Angel of Death to stand guard over you-do you understand me? And I’ll excommunicate anyone who begs to differ!”

“Yes,” Gallen said, confused and frightened. Father Brian’s argument made sense, but in his heart Gallen knew that he would not live this down easily. Five other men had seen the sidhe, and they could not but tell what they had witnessed. Somehow, Gallen felt sure, this would come back to haunt him.

At dawn, the townspeople in Clere dragged the dead monster from the inn and dumped its body into the bay. Father Heany said that no creature damned to be so ugly should be buried on hallowed ground, and the ocean seemed the only place big enough to hide such a fiend.

The town militia guarded the roads but still hadn’t seen more monsters. Yet Maggie knew they were coming. All over town, dogs sniffed the air and barked, sending up keening wails that troubled Maggie’s soul.

“Can you smell them?” Maggie asked Orick just after dawn.

“Aye,” Orick grumbled, standing on his hind legs to catch the scent. “There’s an oily stench on the wind, not from anything human.”

Everywhere, townspeople were rushing about frantically, spreading rumors. But Maggie Flynn just stood, watching longingly up the north road to An Cochan. Gallen still hadn’t returned. He was hours overdue.

“I’m going to An Cochan,” Maggie said at last to Orick, her voice quavering. “If Gallen doesn’t know what’s afoot, he’d better be warned.” She glanced up the road again. There was a tightness in her stomach, a certain knowledge that Gallen had already found trouble. He would never willingly keep a client waiting, and Maggie suspected that his body lay somewhere on the road to An Cochan. If she was lucky, he might still be alive.

“You’re as likely to meet one of those monsters on the road as he is,” Orick said. “And he’s better prepared to defend himself. Just sit tight.”

Orick paced in a circle, rose up on his hind legs and tasted the air again.

Cries of dismay rose from the south end of town. Crowds of people began shouting. Maggie and Orick rushed to the crossroads, looked down the lane: between the shading pine trees, up the cobbled streets lined with picket fences, an ungodly array of giants marched three abreast. Some of them, green-skinned ogres, looked like huge men, eight feet tall. At their head was one of the monsters Orick had slain last night, its too-human head down low, sniffing the ground, blinking at the townspeople with orange eyes.

There were thirty or more of the monsters, and in their center, well protected, walked a creature straight from the bowels of hell. It stood seven feet tall and had a chitinous black carapace. It walked on four extraordinarily long legs, and it held two huge arms before it. One club like arm seemed to end only in a vicious claw, while the other revealed a small, spidery hand that held a black rod.

The beast’s head was enormous, with three clusters of multifaceted eyes in various sizes-two sets of eyes in front, one in back. A long, whip-like whisker was attached to each side of its lower jaw, beneath teeth that looked like something that might have belonged to a skinned horse. Its main body was only about a foot wide across the front, but its ribs would have measured three feet in height. From its shoulders sprouted two enormous pairs of translucent wings, the color of urine. Its bloated abdomen, which was carried between its front and back pair of legs, nearly dragged the ground.

People shouted and ran for their houses, dogs barked and leapt about insanely. Some women and an old man fainted outright, falling to the ground.

Father Heany in his vestments rushed to the street and confronted the black beast. He swung a crucifix overhead and shouted, “Beelzebub, I command you in the name of all that is holy to turn back! Turn back now, or suffer the wrath of God!”

Beneath the black devil’s mouth, dozens of tiny fingers drummed over a patch of tight skin.

The ogre guardians stepped aside, and for one moment the devil faced Father Heany. It pointed the short black staff at the priest. Flames brighter than lightning fanned out, catching Father Heany in the chest. For a moment, Father Heany stood, blazing like a torch, and then the flesh dropped from his bones and his skeleton fell in the middle of the road, amidst a puddle of burning skin. Maggie felt as if her blood froze in her veins.

The ogres trampled Father Heany’s body and just kept advancing toward the inn.

Maggie backed away, retreating between two house-trees toward the edge of town, and Orick padded quietly beside her.

When the menagerie of creatures reached Mahoney’s Inn they stopped, and the doglike leader crouched to sniff the bloody ground.

He turned to Beelzebub and cried, “Master, a vanquisher died here!”

The giants stopped. Beelzebub strode forward and let the whip-like tendrils at his mouth feel the ground, twisting from side to side.

Orick circled behind a tree to hide. Maggie had seen enough. Her heart was pounding, and she struggled to breathe. Every instinct told her to run.

“Let’s get out of here!” she said.

“Wait,” Orick whispered. “Let’s see what they want.”

One ogre kicked down the door to Mahoney’s Inn and rushed inside. A moment later, it dragged out John Mahoney. The innkeeper screamed, gibbering for mercy.

Beelzebub made clicking noises, and one of the giants translated, shouting, “Where did they go? When did you last see them?”

Mahoney fell to his knees. “I don’t know who you mean. Who do you want?”

“You are the owner of this inn?” an ogre shouted. “Two strangers came here last night. A man and a woman.”

“I didn’t see them,” Mahoney begged, crying. And Maggie realized he was telling the truth. He’d already been abed when the strangers came.

But the ogres thought he was lying. One of them growled, and Beelzebub flapped his wings suddenly and leapt into the air. He landed on John Mahoney, teeth first. Maggie saw red blood spurt from John’s head, like the spray of a sea wave as it washes over a rock, then she turned and ran for her life, Orick barreling along beside her.

They hit the woods, rushing through the trees, leaping over logs. Maggie ran until her lungs burned and she could hardly tell which way to go. Still, no matter how far or fast she ran, it did not seem that she was moving far or fast enough to get away. Always she would look behind her, and the town seemed too close, the monsters seemed too close. She probably would have kept running forever, run like a maddened beast to her death, but Orick growled and caught her by the cloak, pulling her to a stop. She screamed and kicked at him, but the bear only growled, “Stop! The strangers went this way! I can follow their trail. We must warn them!”