Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [125]
The air—
The smoke—
The fighting—
“Have a care,” Mother Chilton said.
The screaming—
Something lit up in my head, and I understood.
Queen Caroline writhed and screamed, tied to a stake in the center of the bonfire. The flames had caught her green silk gown. Her black hair, tossing wildly as she flailed, became tipped with fire. Beyond the pyre stood a ring of Blues, the Blues I had brought back from the country of the Dead, and they cut down every man who charged against them. Lord Robert’s army vastly outnumbered the few hundred Blues, but the Blues could not be hurt. Swords passed through them, clubs did not crush their skulls. They didn’t even bother to carry shields. The attackers, on the other hand, fell to the ground, sometimes two or three deep. Blood spouted from their arms, chests, mouths, and I could see their faces twitch in agony as they died.
The queen went on screaming, a high inhuman shriek, as her flesh began to burn.
Lord Robert’s horse plunged through the fighting and somehow reached the pyre. He flung himself off his mount, which had three or four swords sticking from its poor body, just as the beast collapsed on the blood-slimed ground. Lord Robert waded into the pyre, jumped back, went again in. With his sword he slashed at the ropes that bound the burning queen.
A Blue came behind him, raised his sword, and prepared to pierce Lord Robert’s back.
Maggie cried out. But I did not—could not. The scene before me wavered, and if it hadn’t been for Mother Chilton, I might have fallen. But she held me up, pushing me against the stone wall, and so I saw what happened next. What I had known would happen, ever since Maggie had told me in the apple cellar what day it was.
The Blue soldier attacking Lord Robert disappeared. It happened quickly. His flesh melted and ran; I could see the grotesque mask his face became, but only for a moment because it lasted only a moment. His body turned to bones and the bones to dust, and then all that was left was a pile of blue clothing and tarnished armor, the soldier gone.
And so was all the rest of the army I had brought back from death.
Lord Robert’s army—what was left of it—fell on their knees and covered their eyes. Some cried out, words made unintelligible by fear and distance. The din was terrific. But missing from the shouts and prayers and exclamations was one sound.
The queen no longer screamed.
I sagged in Mother Chilton’s arms and she lowered me to the floor. Standing over me, her old face was calm. She said, “Caroline is dead.”
“Yes,” I managed to say, despite the weakness that suddenly pressed on every part of my body, as if it were covered with heavy stones. But it was not weakness, it was sleep. I held it off long enough to make one more effort of will, one more biting of my raw tongue, to cross over for the last time.
All was serenity in the country of the Dead. The broad river flowed placidly, the sky shone with its featureless gray light, the Dead sat and stared at nothing. I saw many of Lord Solek’s men, in their shaggy furs, sitting calmly on the ground, their faces blank and their guns stilled. I saw many, many Greens, as well. Some had died at the first battle with the dead Blues, the one that began in the laundries and raged through the palace a fortnight ago. Others had switched sides, as some men will always do, and had perished in the battle at the pyre, defending the queen to whom they had felt no loyalty in the first place. Interspersed among them sat the newly slain soldiers of Lord Robert’s army, equally tranquil. Up close, I could see how many of them were boys or old men. The desperate Lord Robert had taken what soldiers he could get, by force or bribery or—it was possible—loyalty to Queen Caroline.
There were no Blues among the Dead. I was the one who had seen to that.