Colleen Oakes - War of the Cards

She understood at once why the curtain had come; it was a warning and a gift. It was a warning of the war that would bring death to so many. The curtain was a warning to those who didn’t know that their fates would be forever altered by her fury. It was a gift in that it had bought her a few moments to get her army under control.

Not that it mattered, since she had decided to stay here in this weightless, twinkling plane. She would close her eyes, just for a minute , be free from the pain, just for now .

Something yanked hard at her stomach, and she was pulled backward out of the spinning stars, out of the thick night. Her fingers left streaks of light in the watery black. She flopped backward out of the Sky Curtain and landed hard on the rocky ground below.

“Ow!” she yelped. She tried to stand up, but there was a solid weight pressing down on her chest, so heavy she felt as though her ribs were cracking.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring at a dozen ivory spikes, some crusted with dried blood, others so shiny that they reflected her terrified eyes. Morte peered down at her, his massive head inches away from hers. Steam hissed angrily out of his nostrils, singeing the ends of her hair. His lips curled back, and for a moment Dinah thought he might eat her. Instead, a piece of white fabric fell from his lips, landing on her chest. She looked at the fabric. It was from her shirt. Morte had pulled her out of the Sky Curtain.

“I’m here. I’m here,” she breathed, reassuring herself and reassuring him.

Cheshire knelt beside her. “Are you all right?”

Dinah looked up at Cheshire, then Morte, who gave a huff and pulled up his massive hoof before bringing it down hard beside her head, a deadly serious reprimand. The ground beneath it cracked under his colossal weight.

Dinah sat up. “I’m fine.”

Cheshire stood up with a sigh and smoothed his purple cloak, readjusting his brooch. “She’s fine,” he muttered to himself. “She’ll be the death of me, but she’s fine.” Then, with a raised eyebrow, he turned and walked away from Dinah.

Sir Gorrann looked at Dinah with fascination. “How did you know to go inside it?”

Dinah shook her head. She couldn’t explain. “I just did. How long was I in there?”

Sir Gorrann rubbed his beard. “’Bout a minute’s time. We could all see yeh floating there, turning up and down, but it was obvious you couldn’t see us.” He tilted his head. “What was it like?”

Dinah couldn’t explain it, and when she tried, she found the words all tangled on her tongue. “It was nothing. It was … like being free.”

She was interrupted by a howl of vicious wind that ripped down from the Sky Curtain, so powerful that it almost blew Sir Gorrann off his feet. The wind ceased, and the curtain stood still for a moment before a single star at the top began falling, cartwheeling through the curtain, hitting other stars on its way down. All the stars began to fall, each one colliding with others in burst after burst of green and yellow light. Everything inside the curtain was falling into brilliant destruction, mirrors of light and swirling blackness appearing at random. Finally, the last star fell, a wispy burst of thin light dropping straight down, as if bent on hurtling itself to its doom. The star disappeared beyond the bottom of the curtain, and then the curtain vanished, as quickly as it came, flickering out like a dying flame.

Dinah looked across the grass, happy to see that the Yurkei were still there, except now they were kneeling, their foreheads pressed against the dirt. Their horses went mad around them. The Spades were either lying or kneeling on the ground. Some covered their heads in fear, some pressed their hands together in prayer, and yet others boasted giddy smiles on their faces.

Sir Gorrann looked at Dinah with amazement. “I believe you’ve just made yourself a god.”

The funeral pyre sparked to life again, gentle crackling sounds filling the air. Smoke began to rise.

“Incredible,” breathed Wardley. Dinah closed her eyes at the sound of his voice, at once a balm and a poison.

Yur-Jee and Ki-ershan burst forward from where the curtain had been and practically smothered Dinah, checking her hair and body for wounds.

“I’m all right!” she snapped, gently patting Ki-ershan’s arm. She laughed when she saw his bow and arrow drawn. “Did you try to kill it?” Then she noticed a huge pile of arrows on the ground about twenty feet away, on the other side of where the curtain had been. He had indeed. The Yurkei guard’s commitment to her life never failed to move her.

The Spades began shouting to each other about what they had just seen.

“Oh gods, just shut it already, you filthy animals! Go to yer tents and stay there!” screamed Starey Belft, reasserting his role as a fearsome Spade commander.

After a moment’s pause, the Spades silently obeyed, all anger at the Yurkei defused. The two men who had charged the Yurkei camp left their axes in the dirt and turned away, their heads hanging in shame.

After his troops were in their tents, Starey Belft walked up beside his queen. “What in the bloody hell was that? You’re quite the brave one, aren’t yeh? Should we call you the Sky Queen?”

He reached his hand down to help Dinah to her feet. It was the first time that he’d truly spoken to her as if she was an equal. She hid her smile by turning away from him.

“Just queen will be fine.”

The Spade commander grinned.

With one hand, Dinah reached up for Morte, who lifted his hoof to accommodate her. She slung herself up on his high back, feeling his massive muscles settling themselves against her body. She looked down at her men.

Sir Gorrann’s eyes tracked her movement, riveted by his emboldened leader. “What do you think it meant?”

“It was a warning.”

“A warning about what?”

Dinah sat very still. “It was a warning to us, but also about us. War is inevitable.”

Sir Gorrann looked out at the Yurkei warriors, still on their knees. The Spades had no idea how close they had come to total obliteration. “They should be warned, just as long as we can keep from killing each other.”

Later that evening, as the rest of her army slept, Dinah sharpened her sword beside a fire. A shower of sparks flew down from the blade as she struck it with a rock. Over her shoulder, she felt the creeping presence of someone watching her.

“Hello, Cheshire.”

“Hello, daughter.” Cheshire turned to Ki-ershan, standing a few feet away from Dinah, so still that he could have been mistaken for a tree in the darkness. “I need a few moments with the queen.”

Dinah nodded to Ki-ershan, who took maybe twenty steps away from them, his glowing blue eyes still visible in the dark night.

Cheshire snickered. “I’ll say one thing for the Yurkei, they are quite persistent.” He sat down, fanning out his purple cloak so that she’d have a clean and dry spot on the log beside him.

Dinah looked down at the ground while he made himself comfortable. She still wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about this man: her father, and yet not at all her father.

“We almost lost the battle today.”

“I know.” She blinked and lowered her voice. “I know.”

“The Sky Curtain must mean that the gods want us to be successful!” he crowed. Then his voice sank back to its normal slithering tone. “Or it wants to save us for destruction at the hands of the king.” He shook his head. “This is why I don’t believe in the gods.”

Dinah looked up. “I don’t think it was either of those. I don’t know what it meant, I just know how it felt.” It felt like death and life. “Either way, it’s probably the last beautiful thing we will see for a long time.”