All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [248]
These lands felt abandoned and wrong.
They hurried over terrain that looked like the surface of the moon—and over a half-burned bridge that spanned a river choked with vegetation and oil slicks and bodies and chunks of ice.
On the horizon glowed the Twelve Towers of Queen Sealiah. They perched upon the edge of a cliff. Each tower was different: one was an ancient tree with only a crown of a few spare branches; one was ghostly white and taller than all others; one flickered with lines of phosphorescing fungus. Searchlights played through the air. Cannon and cauldrons smoldered atop the outer walls. Industrial cranes stood among the towers, casting their long steel arms back and forth.
As they neared, one crane lowered a platform.
With a wave of his gauntlet, the head knight indicated that they get on.
Eliot hesitated. Once they got on this thing and were inside those walls, it would be harder to turn around and leave if they wanted to.
Queen Sealiah was more than just the monarch of this domain of Hell. She was also part of his family. And Eliot had met only one of his father’s relations, Beelzebub. He’d tried to kill him and Fiona. Eliot didn’t think that’s what Sealiah had in mind, though.
He looked around, took a deep breath, and stepped onto the platform.
His sister, Robert, and Mr. Welmann got on, too, and it rose into the air.
He saw the land for miles around—desolate, burning, and shattered. Oddly, there was no fighting. If this was a war . . . where was everyone?
The platform lifted up and over the outer wall, where there were hundreds of artillery pieces poised ready to fire, archers, and knights peering through telescopes. Clouds of insects and bats swarmed around them in formations.
Within the great courtyard were tens of thousands of armored knights and soldiers. They hurried to reinforce the walls, sharpen weapons, and load rifles.
Before Eliot and the others they parted like a retreating tide, all falling to one knee in supplication.
This was completely weird.
One day, Eliot was a social zero at school, practically invisible. And here? He was treated like royalty.
He tried to smooth out his scorched and ripped school jacket, but it didn’t work.
Their escorts led them to the tallest tower on the plateau. It was as large as a skyscraper and bone white, which Eliot saw was actually made from bones: dinosaur; elephant; whale; and countless grinning human skulls. Upon the top of the tower sat the three largest skulls, something Eliot had only seen in books, the teeth-filled fossilized remains of Tyrannosaurus rex.63
As they mounted the hundreds of steps, a lone figure appeared at the top to greet them. Jezebel.
Eliot halted in his tracks.
It felt like he’d been struck in the head.
Part of him had thought he’d never see her again . . . thinking her dead, or captured . . . or a million other things that could have happened to her that would have kept them apart. They seemed fated never to be together.
Seeing her now. Here. Finally. He didn’t know what to do but stare.
Her face was unblemished and luminescent, and her lips parted as she saw him. She was different from when he’d last seen her on the Night Train. Her features were too smooth and perfect . . . almost otherworldly. It was as if her face had been recast and fired and ground to a mirror finish, like that of a porcelain doll.
While her face was enchanting, the way she was dressed was anything but inviting. She wore a platinum breastplate the same color as her hair, and it was enameled with roses and orchids, and covered in black metal thorns. A chain mail skirt the color of dried blood hung about her hips and covered high studded combat boots.
She took a step toward him.
Eliot couldn’t resist; he started toward her again. His heart beat so hard, he thought it would explode in his chest. All he wanted to do was take