Page 22 of The Crimson Throne
For now.
My heart drops as my gaze settles on the nearby village. My horse stamps nervously, throwing his head back. I wonder if the animal can see what I see:
The souls of the dead swarm over the buildings.
“Sluagh.” The word escapes my lips unbidden as I kick the horse, spurring him on toward the danger. Most people think the Sluagh are the spirits of people who were not buried properly. If that were the case, this part of Scotland would have plenty of such monsters; the border is rife with fallen warriors over the centuries who were left to rot on bloody battlefields.
But I know it’s not enough to just let the corpse molder on the ground for a Sluagh to rise.
The Sluagh are malevolent souls who have been corrupted by Red Caps who desecrate their deaths.
And they cannot be raised without…
A scream interrupts my thoughts as I draw the horse up on the main street. I throw myself out of the saddle, tossing the reins through an iron ring in front of an inn—loosely though; if the horse needs to escape, he can jerk free.
Most of the townspeople have rushed for cover. I don’t know what they see. Birds, probably, a flock of ravens swarming. But even if they cannot see the Sluagh as I do, their primal instincts have them cowering. I spot fearful faces pressed against windows or peering out from behind hiding spots.
One woman stands alone in front of a small house with a stone wall around the yard.
“My baby!” she screams, waving her arms as she runs toward the Sluagh settling on the wall and floating over her house.
The Sluagh aren’t one single dark soul but a horde of fragmented, bitter remnants of what was once life. They look like shards of glass made of smoke, sharp-edged but shapeless. They’re scattered and broken and violent. And the very essence of their being is rooted in the same bloodlust that drives the Red Caps: insatiable longing for death.
More than a dozen of these evil spirits snatch and rip at a baby crying in the yard near the woman. It’s only because they’re newly raised and weak that they’ve not been able to organize enough to do what they want to do—lift the baby into the sky and drop it, breaking both the body and the soul and adding this innocent life to their horde.
I throw my arm up, grabbing for the wind and hurling it toward theSluagh, scattering them long enough for the woman to scoop up her baby and race for shelter inside the house.
As if a building could protect them.
Nothing will stop the Sluagh. They’re already dead; they can’t be killed a second time. Pain doesn’t exist without a body. The fragmented souls of the dead claw against the walls, hurtle down the chimney, and scrape at the door, desperate to kill.
The Sluagh are unstoppable death machines.
But the ones who dropped down the chimney rise again, like smoke, abandoning the woman and her baby.
The Sluagh may only be capable of killing, but they can be controlled. Directed.
Thatis who I need to stop, whoever is ordering these monsters to attack this innocent border village.
I watch the Sluagh soar up, up, up into the sky, swirling like a dark cloud. Everyone else in the town remains in hiding, and that’s for the best. They would only get in my way.
I stride down the center of the dirt street, hidden by the shadow of the Sluagh above me.
Power laces through my fingers, but it has no direction. The Sluagh are too many and too powerful to attack on my own. Even if I had the ability to call the entire fae court, I doubt all their combined forces would be enough to stop this many Sluagh.
There has to be a cauldron, I think, desperately clinging to the old legends I’ve had memorized since I was a child. Red Caps invented weapons of war that could control others—there’s no point in having an army of the undead or possessed if they cannot be directed. The Sluagh are summoned and controlled with an iron cauldron made by Red Caps.
Find the cauldron, and I’ll find whoever’s controlling the monsters.
Above me, the Sluagh shift, a speckled black cloud above that must look like a murmuration of starlings to the humans. I follow the shadows, and when I hear anguished shouts of pain, I start running.
A person is hunched behind the butcher’s shop, arms thrown up in an attempt to stave off the Sluagh’s claws. The smell of days-old meat is cut through with the fresh, coppery scent of hot blood. With a roar, the man throws his cloak back, scattering the Sluagh long enough for him to brandish a small knife in his hand. He’s brave, I’ll give him that, but that tiny weapon won’t stop the monsters.
For a moment, I watch in awe. He’s just a man, young like me, yet even in the face of such horror, he doesn’t hesitate to fight back with ferocity, as if he doesn’t even care about his own well-being; he’s just intent on taking down as many of the Sluagh as he can. Is he Leth? Can he tell what these beings are? If so, he doesn’t seem to have even a flicker of fear.
I try to send wind again, but it barely disturbs the attack of the dead souls.
I have to find—
