Terry Brooks - Witch Wraith

“No,” she answered. “I was sent to find Sian Aresh to give him a message from the Elven defensive front in the valley. I need to see him.”

He considered a moment. “I heard about the dragon. That was good work.” Then he shrugged. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t be allowed to speak to the captain. He’s with the King, in his bedroom. Down the hall, around the corner left, then first left again. Big, double doors. Another guard on duty.” He gestured to the closed door behind him. “Ellich is in here.” He shook his head in disgust. “A good man, Ellich. I do my duty, but I don’t mind telling you I think this whole business is a travesty. He would never harm his brother. Everyone knows that. There’s something wrong here.”

“Agreed,” Seersha said. She bent close, lowering her voice. “Someone else is to blame for Emperowen’s murder. Any clue as to who it might be?”

The guard shook his head, lips tightening into a frown. “None. But I wouldn’t have, would I? I’m just a soldier serving out my time in the Elven Home Guard. I don’t know these people well enough to be able to guess at either the names or the number of their enemies.”

She nodded. “Well, things will get sorted out. So Aresh is down the hall in the King’s room?”

“Left here just ten, fifteen minutes ago. He was in here with Ellich before that. And Jera. She’s an odd one. She’s not been to see her husband once until today. Then shows up, visits until Aresh comes, and then insists on seeing her nephew. They argued about it. I could hear them through the door. Finally, he gives in.”

Seersha stared. “She wanted to see Phaedon?”

“She said she did. Aresh didn’t like it, though.”

Seersha went still. “Give me those directions again.”

She left without seeming to be in a rush, but once she was out of sight she picked up her pace until she was almost running. She didn’t know what was troubling her exactly. Perhaps it was the idea of Jera visiting her nephew. Perhaps it was hearing that Jera had not come to visit Ellich until tonight. Especially that. It did not sound at all like the woman Aphenglow had described on repeated occasions—a wife whose entire life had been built around caring for her husband.

She reached the next corner and came around it in a rush. She saw the double doors immediately, but there was no guard on duty. She slowed, quieting her approach, her instincts telling her she should be cautious until she knew the lay of the land. She couldn’t imagine what might be happening, but she didn’t like how she was feeling.

She came up to the doors and stopped in front of them, listening. She could hear voices, low and indistinct. Or maybe it was only one voice. There was crying, too. A kind of low sobbing that had hints of despair and exhaustion. She listened for Sian Aresh, but didn’t hear him.

She almost knocked. But in the end she simply opened the door and stepped inside.

Next to the bed, a single smokeless lamp burned on a nightstand. In the faint splash of illumination it cast, she could see everything.

Sian Aresh and the Elven guard lay sprawled on the bedroom floor, lifeless eyes staring. There was blood pooling all around them, metallic and pungent. Phaedon Elessedil had been released from his restraints and was sitting on the side of the bed in his bedclothes. He was holding a knife in his lap, bending over and staring down at it, mumbling and sobbing. There was blood both on his clothes and on the knife.

Jera was sitting next to Phaedon, her arms around him. She was speaking to him in a low voice, and she seemed to be trying to comfort him.

She looked up instantly as Seersha appeared and put a finger to her lips. Seersha stood in front of the open door, staring in shock. “What’s happened here?”

Jera gave her a stern look. “Close the door. Don’t say anything more.”

The Elven woman continued to whisper to Phaedon, her voice low and compelling, her hands on his shoulders, bracing him as he sobbed and whimpered. The King seemed to be completely undone. There was no hint of the old Phaedon, the one Aphen had famously described as cold enough to freeze fire.

Seersha took a few steps toward them and stopped, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. The shadows of the dark room felt as if they were filled with secrets, and all of them hidden from her.

Phaedon went suddenly quiet, leaning into Jera, his face buried in her shoulder.

Jera looked up at Seersha. “He killed them both. Somehow he got free of his restraints and got hold of this knife. When Sian and I entered the room, he attacked immediately. Sian was killed at once. When the guard heard the sounds of fighting and came running, Phaedon killed him, too.”

She stroked Phaedon’s head, smoothing his dark hair. “He didn’t do anything to me. He doesn’t seem to want to. He keeps calling me ‘Mother’ and telling me he’s sorry. I don’t think he even knows what he’s done.”

“He was supposed to be secured to the bed,” Seersha insisted in disbelief. “We told everyone he was a danger to himself and others. How did he get loose?”

Jera shook her head. “I don’t know.” She gave Phaedon a quick hug and rose. “I’ll leave him to you. I have to tell the other guards what’s happened. Ellich, too. Perhaps they’ll free him now.”

Seersha nodded blankly, looking down at the bloodied form of Sian Aresh. She couldn’t quite make sense of it. Jera’s explanation seemed plausible enough, but there was still something wrong. Maybe it was the knife, still in Phaedon’s hands. Maybe it was the tenderness Jera was showing Phaedon—a kindness that felt out of place.

The shock must be causing her to react like this, she told herself as Jera walked past her toward the door.

Then her eyes shifted back to Phaedon, still sitting on the bed, staring into space, and she noticed that the knife was gone.

An instant later she felt a sharp blow to her back followed by a wrenching pain, and she collapsed to the bedroom floor. It was as if all her strings had been cut, and she could no longer make anything work. She lay in a red haze of anguish and fury, watching as Jera Elessedil stood looking down at her, bloodied knife in hand, and she realized what had happened.

“You killed them,” she managed to gasp.

Suddenly Jera didn’t look like Jera anymore, but like something not even human. Her features were losing shape and twisting into something feral. It lasted just a minute, and then she was back to herself again.

“You’re not dying fast enough,” she hissed.

She lunged for Seersha, who barely managed to catch hold of her wrists and stop the knife’s downward descent. Jera shrieked and thrashed in her grip, and for a moment Seersha, her strength all but gone, was certain she was finished.

But Jera was too eager, and her wild efforts caused her to lose her footing and tumble to the floor, the knife skittering away. Seersha saw her chance—one so small it offered no real hope, but she embraced it anyway. In an instant she was on top of Jera, her wounds forgotten, her weakness thrust aside, her body flooded with the Druid magic that had always sustained her. Everything happened all at once, and even making the effort to regain control of her injured body was done on faith.

A warrior to the last, she refused to give in to the damage and the pain, refused to admit she couldn’t do what she needed to survive. Refused to admit she was finished.

She bore down on Jera Elessedil with every last ounce of strength she could find, hammered her head into the floor, then jammed a forearm across the her neck and pressed down.

The cry that broke from Jera’s mouth was terrifying and inhuman. Instantly, the creature that had surfaced earlier—the creature Seersha now realized had been disguised as Jera—reappeared in bits and pieces. Clothing ripped and split apart. Skin fell away. Jera Elessedil began to fade, and something muscular and lithe emerged in her place, something covered head-to-foot in earth-colored hair and possessed of sharp claws and teeth—a being like nothing Seersha had ever seen before. She knew this was what had killed not only Aresh and the guard but also the old King. It was the spy that had tried to steal the diary from Aphenglow and leave her injured or dead.