The Call - Michael Grant [42]
The bodies were mostly human, but there were also dead Skirrit and Tong Elves, Bowands, a scattering of Near Deads, even a pair of giant Gudridan—all of them monsters or allies of the Pale Queen.
And the destruction went beyond the castle. The entire forest had been knocked flat or burned down. Villages were gone for a hundred miles in every direction. No deer or skunk or bird or snake had survived.
Grimluk found the body of his friend the pikeman, Wick. He dug a grave for the man himself and piled stones to mark the place.
Bruise and Miladew found him standing there. Bruise had managed to upgrade his wardrobe. The one good thing that could be said for so much death was that there were now plenty of clothes to go around, although most were bloody.
“Grimluk,” Miladew said gently, touching his arm. “It is time.”
“The battle is over,” Grimluk said. “The Pale Queen lies in chains. We won.”
“The battle is over, but not the war,” Bruise said. “Drupe has called for all the wise men and witches to assemble. They will decide the fate of the Pale Queen. And we, with the last of our failing powers, must carry out the sentence.”
“Surely the sentence is death,” Grimluk said.
Miladew shook her head. “Nay, Grimluk. Four of the twelve are dead. To try and kill her now with what is left, with just eight, would kill us all.”
Grimluk hated the Pale Queen, but this news definitely gave him pause.
Drupe stood waiting for Grimluk back at the castle. “So long as Princess Ereskigal is free, the Pale Queen cannot be killed. For at the death of the Pale One, her terrible power is inherited by her vile daughter,” said the witch.
“Well, that’s messed up,” Grimluk said. Or words to that effect.
“She will be exiled to the World Beneath,” Drupe said. “She will see no sunlight, no green plant or blue sky. She will live in the kingdom of monsters, the land of the cursed dead. Forever.”
They headed back to the castle. It was wrecked, walls mostly torn down, roofs collapsed. The narrow streets were filled with bodies. In Grimluk’s grim life he had never imagined he could witness anything so grim.
He wanted nothing now but to get away from here and find his family. He would take any job now, anything that would get him away from this place of horror. Anything so long as he could be back with Gelidberry and the baby he would name Victory (he couldn’t quite remember whether it had been a boy or a girl).
And that’s what he told Drupe when they were in the now ceiling-free and three-walled meeting chamber.
“Alas, Grimluk,” Drupe said, and she laid her hand on his shoulder. “Your family is no more.”
Grimluk stared at her, trying to make sense of what she was saying.
“Gelidberry and the child were in the village of Suther when it was overrun by a troop of Gudridan.”
Gudridan were known for their giant size. And for their diet, which consisted almost entirely of human flesh.
“No,” Grimluk gasped.
He sat down very suddenly on the cold stone floor. He sighed deeply, and it was as if at that moment the last of his spirit left him forever. With all that he had endured, all that he had witnessed, all the pain, this pain was greater still.
Drupe squatted down beside him—a move made easier by the fact that she had managed to turn her ostrich leg into a deer’s leg, which was an improvement.
“You can find a new wife. You can have a new child. You will be forever honored as the leader of the Magnificent Twelve.”
Grimluk barely heard her. He just shook his head.
“The job of honored hero is yours if you wish. It pays well, and you’ll be given a small farmhouse.”
“I…I can’t…” Grimluk began to cry, and because the concept of “macho” would not be invented for many centuries, he cried without shame.
“Those of the remaining Magnifica who so choose will scour the world searching for Princess Ereskigal,” Drupe said. “So long as she lives, we cannot destroy the Pale Queen.”
“I will go. The others will go with me.”
“You have not very much time.