The Last Lullaby (The Spellsinger Book 1) Page 25

  “So the relationship between monarchs and jewels is a form of symbiosis,” I noted. “The jewel provides power, and the ruler provides sanctuary.”

  “Precisely.” Quinlan beamed. “You have the mind of a scientist, Your Majesty.”

  Banning gave Quinlan an odd look, but he remained silent throughout the rest of the journey through Copper. Our timing was a little off, and we neared the Copper Castle around midday. Night was the standard time for infiltrating a castle. So we decided to double back to a small town we'd passed through, and get some refreshment while we waited for dusk. Our horses were in need of some rest as well. Plus, if we could be subtle about it, we might even be able to gather some intel from the locals.

  We chose a modest, but clean looking, establishment, more of a bar than a restaurant. I'd call it a tavern, but the Shining Ones weren't that medieval. They did dress more typically of that human time period, but they were just as advanced as the human realm was. In some ways, they were more advanced. I guess “pub” would be a good word for it. It looked like something you might walk into in the United Kingdom. Except for all the magic flying around of course.

  I'd become used to it, pretty much immune to the sight of Shining Ones doing their daily chores with a little assistance from their stones. Banning seemed just as numb to it as I, adroitly maneuvering around a hovering drink as he took lead through the main room. Much more startling than the magic, were the human machines. A coffee maker sat behind the bar, gurgling away, and a jukebox squatted in one corner, belting out some very old songs. I blinked at the surrealism as we casually took over an empty table, and waited to be approached by a waitress.

  When she came by, I gave Banning a look, and we both angled our faces downward, so the Shining One wouldn't notice our nonfey features. We needn't have worried. The beleaguered barmaid barely glanced at us, taking our orders with an air of bored indifference before heading back to the bar. And she didn't return either. Our food and drinks floated out to us, just as everyone else's did.

  “Should I make some rounds, ask how things fare in the kingdom?” Sir Hugh asked me.

  “No, hang back.” I glanced to the side, where a group of men were avidly conversing. “I think if we're quiet, we may be able to simply listen in, without drawing attention to ourselves.”

  “I can hear the conversations at the back of the room, if you're interested,” Banning said.

  I looked up at him in surprise. “I didn't realize blooder hearing was so good.”

  Banning smirked. “Old blooder hearing is.”

  “All right.” I agreed. “You listen to the conversations we can't hear, and we'll focus on the closer ones.”

  We all set to eating and drinking as quietly as possible, while focusing intently on the people around us. Mainly, it was just your average talk: harvests, women, cattle. But then I caught the trace of annoyance in someone's tone, and I honed in on his words.

  “Why's it so damn important anyway?” the man grumbled. “Guarding an old farmhouse seems stupid.”

  “King Lorcan probably has a mistress out there,” another man chuckled.

  “Pft,” the first man scoffed. “Ain't no women going in there, and ain't no royal mistress gonna accept that for a home. There's something devious going on there, you mark me!”

  “It's probably that crazy loup the king hired to fiddle with human magic.”

  “No such thing as human magic.”

  “There is too. They call it science.”

  “Not magic,” the man grumbled.

  “Still, I seen lots of copper going into that farmhouse.” The first guy was talking again. “Who knows what's going on out there? They could be fashioning poisons to kill the Onyx King. You know that King Lorcan still wants him dead.”

  “He ain't gonna mess with King Torin,” another man scoffed. “Lorcan's got his queen. What does King Torin have? Nothing.”

  “I heard he's got a beautiful witch for a mistress,” a man said wistfully.

  “No, she's a siren,” another corrected him.

  “Whatever she may be, the Onyx King has his own cunny, and he don't want our queen anymore. King Lorcan's gotta know that.”

  “That probably just makes him madder,” another said with a wise tone. “Poison. Must be. He'll send it in with a maid and have her sneak it in Torin's food.”

  “How can you make poison with copper?” another man scoffed.

  “Can.”

  “Can't.”

  “What farmhouse are you talking about?” another guy asked, and I tensed expectantly.

  “You know, the one that old Mavis abandoned when she went to live with her daughter in Opal. Just down the road to the castle, and off to the right. It's perfect for the king's poison-making experiments, as close as it is to Copper Castle, while still being outside the guardians. The queen will never suspect.”

  “The poor woman,” another man said. “Rejected by one man, and coveted by another, to the point of being a prisoner.”

  “Hush,” someone hissed. “What if the king has spies here?”

  I felt their stares shift to us. We must have been the only strangers in the room. I lowered my face a little more and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. Sir Carrick called to the waitress for another round, and the inspection from the table beside us ceased. I looked up at Banning, and we shared a victorious smile.

  Chapter Forty

  The farmhouse was fairly easy to find using those convenient directions we'd overheard. It wasn't in the best shape, tiles clinging desperately to the roof in places and windows dusty from neglect. The crops looked as abandoned as the house, overgrown to a state impossible to harvest. Each plant was entangled so thoroughly with its neighbors that their orderly rows had been completely obscured. Fruit rotted on the ground below, unseen but making its presence known through its death stench. A copper cistern stood to the side of this wilderness, corroded to deep umber with splotches of turquoise, like some kind of alien fungus.

  We left the horses tethered to some gnarled trees and crept up to the shambling building in the deepening twilight. The lavender light cast everything into shades of purple and made the shadows seem more menacing. I ignored the sensation and scuttled around a boulder, peering at the guards posted around the perimeter.

  “I think I can just sing them to sleep,” I whispered.

  “Wasn't the whole point to get rid of any who might know about the bombs?” Banning reminded me.

  “But they're just guards.” I didn't like the idea of killing men for nothing. “They probably don't know what's going on inside that building.”

  “We don't know what's going on inside that building,” Sir Hugh muttered. “I think it might be wise to reconnoiter a bit, Your Majesty.”

  “Valid.” I grimaced. “But your reconnoitering could catch the guards' attention.”

  “Then you may sing your lullaby,” Hugh said.

  “All right, Sir Hugh,” I agreed. “Have at it.”

  Hugh was more stealthy than I'd given him credit for. I didn't see him sneaking up on the building, and I knew to look for him. Not a single bush shook or rock slid to give away his location, and none of the guards even twitched. Hugh was back within ten minutes.

  “There's a horde of copper inside, along with some suspicious pieces of metal, and some fully assembled bombs,” Hugh reported. “And those men were right; there is also a loup present. We'll need to restrain him as soon as possible, or he might make use of one of his creations. But I saw no others in the building.”

  “A werewolf scientist.” I shook my head. “I guess there are stranger things.”

  “Like a Shining One scientist?” Quinlan smirked.

  “Maybe,” I said with a grin. “All right, let me just send some relaxing vibes over to these soldiers. I'll put them to sleep, and then we can investigate. If it looks as if they're complicit, we'll kill them.”

  The men nodded their agreement.

  I began to hum softly, visualizing the me
n across the field from us falling gently into slumber. Then I sang Brahms's “Lullaby,” as sweetly as any mother tucking her children in at night. The relic glowed gently, gathering and intensifying my magic before sending it shooting out to the soldiers. They didn't even make it to the second line. I lifted my brows in surprise.

  “Well done, Elaria,” Banning noted. “All right, let's go. Maybe we can get out of this kingdom before morning.”

  “You forget; we still need to kill the king,” Carrick reminded us.

  “Another king to murder,” I whispered to myself.

  “You had no problem killing those blooders.” Banning slid a glance at me as we snuck quickly and quietly up to the farmhouse.

  “They were running across a golf course ready to murder anything in their path.” I shrugged. “It's a little easier to kill a man intent on killing you than to murder one who doesn't even know it's coming.”

  “Fair enough.” Banning reached for the handle of the backdoor while the rest of us reached for our magic.

  Then Banning held up his fingers: one, two, three. He jerked the door open, and we all piled inside like a black ops team. The loup was sitting at his desk, a lamp hanging directly above him, leaving the rest of the room in deep shadow. He was taken completely unaware, and we had him restrained within seconds. But he wasn't upset in the least. In fact, he started laughing. As I'd already learned from my experience with Torin, your target smiling was a bad sign. Laughing had to be ten times worse.

  And it was.

  “The Queen of Song.” A man walked out of the shadows on my right, as if he'd been formed of them.

  He was around the size of our knights, a muscled, but slim, Shining One. Dirty-blond hair, appearing a little more on the dirty side in the meager illumination of the farmhouse, hung about his shoulders. It was too dark to see his eyes, but I caught a metallic gleam when the lamp glow hit them. His skin was the nutty tan of a laborer, but I doubted that this man had seen a day's work in his life. He smirked at me, holding a copper bomb aloft like an apple at an archery contest. The fingers of his other hand gripped the steel strip that would activate it.

  “King Lorcan?” I lifted a brow. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  “Is it?” Lorcan laughed. “And here I thought you'd be terrified to find yourself trapped by the Copper King. You enjoyed my little game then?”

  “Those men were plants.” I felt my teeth grind together. “Damn it, I should have known that was too easy.”

  “I had thought you'd be a little wiser.” King Lorcan tsked me.

  “Morons.” The loup, who was the biggest man in the room, and had all the attractiveness of a worn-out, carny hawker, rolled his eyes and chuckled.

  “You shouldn't have even known we were here.” I defended us, as if a crazy fairy king wasn't casually holding a magical A-bomb.

  “Oh, that's adorable.” Lorcan smirked. “Little spellsinger, I knew the moment you stepped foot in my kingdom. I have spies everywhere. I knew when Emmet was discovered that it would be only a matter of time before you came to kill me. To try and kill me. I've had men posted at my borders ever since. They simply followed you to that tavern, and directed you straight to me.”

  “Fuck this.” Banning, who had a knife to the loup's throat, growled. “Put the bomb down or I kill the wolf.”

  “Kill him.” Lorcan shrugged. “I don't give a shit. He's already showed me how to make the bombs.”

  “What?” The loup stopped laughing. “God damn you, Lorcan. You need”

  Banning called Lorcan's bluff, but instead of slicing his throat, he clutched the wolf tighter and bit him. The loup gurgled out the rest of his sentence, grasping at the air with hands shifting into claws and trying vainly to remove Banning from his neck. Banning stabbed the loup in the side as he continued to savage his throat. Our knights tensed as Banning drank his fill, then tossed the dead loup to the floor between me and Lorcan. The body landed with a heavy thud, its eyes managing to stare up at Lorcan in accusation.

  “He was our only means for negotiation,” Quinlan hissed at Banning.

  “We had to kill him anyway,” Banning wiped away the blood around his mouth, then licked his fingers. “And he's hardly our only leverage.” He looked pointedly at me.

  “Oh yes.” Lorcan smiled sweetly, as if there weren't a dead man lying at his feet. “I've heard all about your talent. Go ahead, try and sing your spell before I pull this piece of steel. I don't think you'll be successful. And in case you haven't noticed, this is one of our newer, larger bombs. It has a radius of twenty feet. More than enough to kill all of you, while leaving me completely out of harm's way.”

  I noted the expanse of the room, and that the bastard was right.

  “Now, back yourselves outside,” Lorcan nodded to the door. “Slowly.”

  I looked at the others and gave them a slight nod. “Stay together,” I whispered, “as close as possible.”

  “Nice job with my soldiers.” Lorcan smirked. “So kind of you not to kill them. I never expected the Spellsinger to have a soft side. There.” He nodded toward an open space in front of the farmhouse. “Go.”

  “I'm going to rush him,” Banning whispered to me. “Grab the others and run.”

  “Banning”

  “I can't let you die again, Ellie.” Banning's eyes were wild. “Please just do it.”

  “Shut up and trust me, Banning,” I hissed. “All of you, when the time comes, you gather around me tight.”

  Banning's eyes went wide, and he gave me a quick nod. Our knights also agreed, and started to look a little more hopeful.

  “Stop,” Lorcan called. “That's far enough. I almost hate to kill you so quickly. You've come so far, after all. I'll have to take comfort in the fact that Torin will suffer when he receives your head as a gift.”

  “Killing her will ensure your own death,” Carrick said bravely. “If King Galen succeeds, it will”

  “Yes, yes.” Lorcan huffed, pulled the metal strip, and tossed the bomb at us. “She's the hope of all the worlds.” He rolled his eyes.

  I cast my hands out before me, already prepared with a visualization of a shield, and punched out with magic and music. I shouted the lyrics to Ashford & Simpson's “Solid.” It wasn't the most pleasing rendition, but it did the job. The relic flared, magic rushed through the jewels at my throat, and the bomb bounced off an invisible barrier, heading straight back to its sender. Lorcan gaped in shock as it hit the ground a few inches away from his feet and burst open in a blinding pulse of murdered magic. I kept singing, yanking the men into a huddle as I envisioned an impenetrable shield around us.

  We should have been far enough away from the blast, but I wasn't taking any chances. The relic flared even brighter, so bright, I could still see its glow when I closed my eyes against the explosion. I heard Lorcan scream, then several others joined him, but the shouts were brief, cut short like someone pressed stop on a stereo.

  I sang on, clutching the men tighter, focusing on that unbreakable shield until I felt like we were safe. I finally risked a glance, and saw the world calm around us. I stopped singing, the relic fading into rest. The men slowly fell away from me, a flower opening to a new day. We stumbled to our feet and then just stared about us in shock.

  The ground before us was littered with bloody chunks of flesh and bone . . . and other things I don't even want to mention. The blast may have stopped short of us, but the carnage had spewed right up to my shield, forming a gory arc over the dry earth. The soil was already soaking up the blood, turning into garish mud. It had a lot of blood to drink several of Lorcan's soldiers had been caught in the blast along with him.

  I walked through the carnage on unsteady feet, trying to breathe through my mouth, and then deciding that tasting the gore was worse than smelling it. I cringed at the way the earth sucked at each of my footsteps, and took a moment to tap off the mud when I reached dry soil. Bloody earth splattered, mixed with chunks of King Lorcan. I swallowed the bile rising in my thr
oat and went steadily forward. Five sleeping soldiers remained, whole and peaceful. Completely undisturbed by the bomb or its repercussions. I sighed resignedly and looked at Banning.

  “Is it dinner time, darling?” Banning smiled viciously at me.

  “Bon appétit.” I grimaced. The onyx knights gave me hard looks, and I stared them down. “Would you prefer I burn them alive? Or you could stab them in their hearts?” The knights looked away. “Yeah, Banning at least can benefit from their deaths. After that demonstration from their king, I just can't take the risk of leaving them alive.”

  “We understand, Your Majesty.” Carrick said softly as the sound of Banning's feeding filtered over to us. His eyes fluttered, but met my stare. “And I realize that you have the interests of all the realms in mind. The threat must be eliminated. That's the reason we're here.”

  “I'm glad you feel that way, Sir Carrick.” I smiled ruefully. “Because I'm going to need your help gathering up the remaining bombs.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  “What have you done?”

  The men from the pub stood on the road before us, blocking our way into the copper city. We were just leaving the farmhouse, and it looked as if they'd come to check on their king. Finding him in thousands of pieces was probably unexpected.

  “I've killed your king,” I said succinctly.

  Sir Carrick made a choking sound.

  “Where is he?” One of the copper fairies looked around the bloody field with horror. “I see only a few soldiers. Where are the rest of them?”

  “You'll find them in front of the farmhouse.” My voice went cold and casual.

  I didn't want to kill these men, but I needed to know if they had any knowledge of the bombs before I let them go.