All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [247]
Eliot and the others followed—at a respectable distance, but not too far back, because as soon as Fiona passed, tendrils wormed back and new braches extruded.
Thirty more paces like that and they emerged back onto clear tracks.
Ahead was a train station that looked like a gigantic hothouse, one that someone had taken a baseball bat to and busted every pane of glass.
Standing outside the station were six knights in mirror-polished steel plate mail embellished with gold and emerald inlay. Foot-long thorns bristled from their armor. They held weapons that looked part hunting rifle, part medieval execution ax.
Robert drew his gun. Fiona touched the chain on her wrist, but then instead pulled off a rubber band and stretched it.
The knights saw them, and they sank to one knee.
“Well,” Fiona whispered, “that’s . . . different.”
“Huh,” Robert said. He lowered his gun, but didn’t holster it.
“It will be okay,” Eliot told them, and plodded ahead.
Like the Ticket Master who had bowed before Eliot on the Night Train, these guys had to have mistaken him for an Infernal Lord.
As Eliot and the others approached, the knight in front stood, and with his head still bowed, he said, “Most noble Master Post, and Miss Post, son and daughter of the Prince of Darkness, we are your honor escorts, the Knights of the Thorned Rose, Queen Sealiah’s personal guards.”62
These guys knew exactly who they were.
“Honor guard, right,” Robert said with a snort. “Why should we believe you guys?”
Fiona shot him a look for being so rude.
The knight standing turned his stilted visor to Robert, and stared at him a long moment.
“Because, sir,” that knight said, “the dismembered bodies of three hundred of the finest soldiers and knights litter the road from here to the Twelve Towers—proof enough that we have fought and bled and suffered long to clear a way so you may proceed unmolested to our Queen.”
“Do we even really need to go any farther?” Fiona asked Eliot. She turned to the knight and inquired, “Is Jezebel with you? Or close? She’s the one we want to talk with.”
“No, great Lady,” the knight said, and ducked his head apologetically. “The Duchess of the Burning Orchards is at the side of our Queen.”
Fiona sighed. “Figures.”
“A second, please?” Eliot said the knight in charge.
Eliot stepped back with the others and they huddled. “We have three options,” he whispered. “Steal a train and get out of here.”
“I’m betting the tracks are cut in both directions,” Mr. Welmann told him.
Eliot nodded in agreement. “We go ahead, but on our own.”
He gazed down the road and saw the burning remains of soldiers, twisted armor and broken lances, smoldering napalm, and torn bits of shadow slithering . . . a swath of ruin and battle for miles. Here and there, however, body parts twitched and moved.
What happened to the dead in Hell when they—what was the right word for it—died? Did they slowly come back together? Or did they just lie there in pieces forever?
Eliot swallowed, trying not to get sick again.
“Or,” Eliot said, “we let these guys take us to their Queen.”
“Into what might be a trap,” Fiona reminded them.
“I think they’re telling the truth about them fighting and dying just to help us,” Eliot said.
Fiona chewed on her lower lip. “Well, they don’t seem like they want to immediately kill us. That’s progress.”
“I don’t want to go back through those Blasted Lands,” Robert murmured.
“Or hoof it through the rest of Hell,” Mr. Welmann added.
Fiona sighed and shook her head. “I guess we go with the welcoming committee . . . for now.”
Eliot returned to the knights. “Please,” he told them, “show us the way, sir.”
The head knight motioned to his men. They rose and formed a loose circle around them. Eliot didn’t particularly like being surrounded by armed warriors, but they seemed okay; none of them looked directly at them, and their weapons pointed away.
Still, instinct told Eliot not to trust anyone in Hell.
The Poppy Lands were worse than Eliot remembered from his previous trip on the Night Train. The earth