Jenna Helland: The Fanged Crown

But that night, in the presence of the abnormal weather, fear had wormed its way into his chest.

The groundskeeper vanished looking for the cook who disappeared with dinner unfinished. And why was that load of wood delivered in this weather? And then there were the guests themselves. They had managed to arrive before the fog settled, yet they were so fatigued they’d all begged off to their rooms to rest before dinner, without the usual preening and gossiping these sorts of events were full of.

Nothing made sense.

Preferring to be angry rather than afraid, Amhar focused his mind on Cardew, the idiot who was ignoring warning signs that were as plain as the nose on his face. Fussing about his dinner with an unnatural fog rising up and swallowing servants. And the children in the palace in that buffoon’s care!

If anything happened, Amhar knew he’d blame Cardew’s stubborn posturing for the rest of his days.

They reached the crest of the hill where they were supposed to rendezvous with the man who had sent for reinforcements. The fog pressed in on them, smothering the light of their lanterns and deadening the sounds of their footfalls.

“Where did the scout go?” the man beside him asked, shivering in his uniform.

“He may be up the next rise,” Amhar said. “Too foggy to see where you’re at in this.”

Suddenly a noise like a door being ripped off its hinges broke through the fog and made the soldiers startle and yank out their weapons. They moved into a tight circle with their backs to each other, tensely waiting for something to materialize out of the fog. Soon, they heard skittering noises coming from beyond the light of their lanterns. Amhar felt oddly claustrophobic, as if he were in a tiny room. The skittering noises faded away, but the soldiers held their defensive position until the silence seemed secure.

“The wildlife,” Amhar said, his words sounding false even to his own ears. “They’re probably as disoriented as we are.”

Continuing their cautious walk up the road, they came to the foot of a steep rise where the ruts from cart wheels dug deep into the road’s surface. There was still no sign of the scout, but the fog was a little thinner, and they could see the diffuse light of the moon through the clouds overhead.

“Ugh,” a soldier said. “How come it got muddy all of a sudden?”

Amhar tried to lift a boot and found it stuck in wet earth where just a few moments before the ground had been bone dry. A dark liquid ran down the cart ruts, soaking the dirt. Amhar lowered his lantern and saw that the wetness wasn’t water at all. Blood. He raised his eyes to the dark shape of the cart looming on the crest of the hill above him.

He motioned to the men to be quiet, although their lanterns would have given them away from a distance. They moved up the side of the road. The first corpse tripped the soldier beside Amhar.

The body of a man lay half on the road and half in the watery ditch that ran along it. Below the waist his body was a meaty mess, and his unblinking eyes were open to the night sky.

“Beshaba!” the soldier cried, scrambling back from the corpse.

“Swords up!” another whispered. “We’ve found our trouble.”

The dark shape on the crest of the hill was a cart run off the road with a dead horse still harnessed to it. Amhar thought there were three more corpses beside the cart, but as he drew closer, he saw it was just one corpse hacked into three pieces. When the dwarf turned slightly to whisper to the soldier beside him, he saw horror on the man’s face.

Something moved behind them. Amhar dropped and rolled to the ditch as three dark-clothed figures darted out of the fog, holding scythes in their gloved hands. Amhar’s lantern went flying into the weeds behind him.

The attackers slipped in and out of shifting cones of light as his lantern flickered out. Men shouted, and swords clashed. Amhar gripped his axe and clambered to his feet as another soldier fell backward into the ditch, a sword in his chest.

Scrambling out of the ditch, Amhar rushed the attackers, his axe raised. He swung wildly into the murky fog, but the figures were quick and dodged his blade. The blunt end of a scythe flew out of the darkness, striking him between the eyes. Reeling backward, Amhar felt himself lose consciousness.

But not before he saw the distinctive curve of a pointed ear above a dark mask covering part of a man’s face, limned in the faint moonlight.

He awoke to a misty morning. Even before he opened his eyes, he remembered where he was and what had happened. Traces of fog still clung to the low-lying areas, but as the sun appeared on the horizon, strong winds off the ocean cleansed the steely sky.

Amhar pushed himself off the ground. It was not a surprise to see the bodies strewn across the track, but the level of brutality was something more than he could fathom. He tried to count bodies, to determine how many had survived, but the road was littered with so many pieces—recognizable and otherwise—that he gave up.

Amhar made a cursory search of the empty cart. If there had been a tarp, he would have covered the bodies, or as much of them as he could. Shivering with cold and shock, he stumbled down the hill to the palace, blood soaking his uniform and fear soaking his heart.

You’re Amhar,” Harp said, for the third time.

“Will you let me finish?” Boult said. “I made my way back to the Winter Palace. A new regiment had arrived and was dragging corpses out into the courtyard. They’d been … it was horrible.”

“How many were killed?” Harp asked.

“Six guests, thirteen soldiers, and four children,” Boult recited tonelessly. “Three survivors. And me.”

“You’re Amhar.” Harp shook his head. “How did the attackers get into the palace in the first place?”

“The Inquiry said that the oldest boy, Daviel, stole away to see a village girl. He left a door in East Lion’s gate open.”

“Were you at the Inquiry?” Harp asked.

“In chains,” Boult said bitterly. “It was a farce, of course. Daviel’s body was found in the cellar. Why would the killer bring the body back to the palace?”

“A good question.” They both fell silent. The Children’s Massacre still weighed heavily on the hearts of Tethyr.

“You’re Amhar,” Harp said after a moment. “The infamous killer of children. Honestly, I don’t know how I missed it.”

Boult’s eyes narrowed to slits, and a dark look passed over his features.

“Oh come on! I’m not serious, Boult,” Harp said. “I know you’d never kill an innocent. But, you have to admit, it’s a pretty strange thing to ask me to get my head around.”

Harp wasn’t exaggerating. After the massacre at the Winter Palace, Amhar the dwarf became notorious throughout Tethyr and even beyond its borders. The name Amhar became synonymous with the worst sorts of crimes. Every unsolved murder in Tethyr was blamed on him and his network of underlings. Many dwarves suffered for their alleged connections to Amhar even after he was sent to the Vankila Slab.

Harp led the way through the dank hold to the square of dusty sunlight at the base of the ladder.

“If you weren’t even in the palace at the time of the massacre, how exactly did you end up blamed for it?” Harp asked as they weaved around the tools and ropes hanging from the ceiling.

“Cardew,” Boult said. “He blamed me, and everyone believed him.”

If Amhar the dwarf had become known as the Scourge of Tethyr after the tragedy, Cardew had emerged as the Hero of the Realm, savior of Ysabel, heir to the throne. He had ascended to a place of prominence in the Court of the Crimson Leaf and was said to carry Queen Anais’s personal mark of confidence.