The Call (The Magnificent 12 1)

She was perhaps his age, although there was an agelessness to her pale, perfect skin. She had wild red hair, long curls that seemed to move of their own accord, twisting and writhing.

Her eyes were green and glowed with an inner light that pierced him to his very soul.

She had a sullen mouth, full red lips, and more teeth than Grimluk and Gelidberry combined. In fact, she seemed, miraculously, to have all of her teeth. And those teeth were white. White without even a touch of yellow.

She wore a dark red dress that lay tight against her body.

Grimluk realized with a shock that the light he had seen was coming from her. Her very skin glowed. Her eyes were green coals. Her hair glistened as it moved.

“Who comes hither?” the girl asked, and Grimluk knew, knew deep down inside, that he would answer, that he would stand up, brush himself off, and answer, “It’s me, Grimluk.”

But he also knew this would be a bad thing. No creature could possibly be this beautiful, this bright, this clean, this toothy, unless she was a witch. Or some other unnatural creature.

As he was in the act of standing up, a voice spoke from the darkness behind him.

“Your servants, Princess.”

The voice was definitely foreign. It wasn’t simply that the voice spoke the common tongue with an accent; it was that it seemed to form sounds within that speech that were unlike anything that could come from a human mouth.

A dry, rasping, irritating, whispery voice in response to the cold, confident voice of the stunning object identified as “Princess.”

“Ah,” the girl said. “At last. You have kept me waiting.”

Grimluk heard things moving from behind him, more than one thing—seve

ral things, maybe as many as six. Or some other very large number.

He crouched and did not move. If he could have stopped the very beating of his heart, he would have. For the creatures that now emerged into the light of the princess’s perfect form were monsters.

They stood as tall as the tallest man (five feet, three inches). But they were not men.

Like huge insects they were, like locusts that walked erect. They moved with sliding steps of bent-back legs and planted clawlike feet. Jointed arms stuck out from the middle of their foul, ochre-tinged bodies. And a second set of arms, smaller than the first, emerged from just below what might be a neck.

And the heads…smoothly triangular, with bulging, wet-shining eyes mounted atop short stalks.

They were hideous and awful. And from their midsections—not waists so much as precarious narrowings—hung belts that held varieties of bright metal weapons. Knives, swords, maces, scrapers, darts, and all manner of objects for stabbing, cutting, slicing, dicing, and chopping.

Grimluk hoped they were simply well-equipped cooks, but he doubted it. They moved with an arrogant swagger, not unlike the way the baron moved—or would have, had he been a very large grasshopper.

They gathered around the princess, illuminated by her own light.

For a moment Grimluk feared for the girl. They were a desperate, frightening bunch and looked as if they could make short work of the red-haired beauty.

But the girl showed no fear.

“Faithful Skirrit minions, do you bring me news of the queen, my mother?” she asked.

“We do,” one of the bugs answered.

“Good. You have done well to find me. And I will hear all you can tell me, gladly. But first, I hunger.”

This news caused a certain shuffling and backpedaling among the Skirrit.

“Hungry?” their spokesman or leader asked with what must be nervousness among his kind. “Now?”

“One will be enough,” the princess said.

The Skirrit captain pointed his two left-side arms at one of his fellows. “You heard the princess,” he said.