Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

Mircea must have shifted us, and he’d obviously been somewhere back in time when he did it. My power hadn’t warned me about that, or maybe it had and I’d been too busy dying to listen. But that didn’t explain anything about Jonathan. How had he followed us—or from the way things looked, gotten here ahead of us?

I didn’t know, but he’d brought friends. A lot of them. Maybe a hundred Svarestri warriors were scattered around the courtyard, their shiny black armor gleaming in the sunlight, their silver hair whipping out behind them in the wind. That included a line of a dozen nearby who I barely glanced at, because I’d just seen what was in front of them.

I stared at the lineup, and then at Pritkin, who looked back blankly. He clearly had no idea, either. Which was fair, since I couldn’t think of a reason for that group to all be assembled together.

From right to left, the Svarestri appeared to be guarding Mircea, who was kneeling on the ground looking stunned; a strange, cloven hoofed creature with a goat’s head but intelligent eyes; Rhea in a long, white lace gown; and—

I had no idea.

There was a fourth prisoner in the lineup, but she was flickering in and out. One minute, she was a spectral creature, barely visible against the backdrop of the sky. And the next, a woman appeared, blue gowned and brown haired, with braids that looped up around her ears and . . .

And I decided that the pain was making me hallucinate, because that looked a lot like the Pythian Court’s librarian.

She went transparent again, and I finally realized why, when I spotted an absolutely huge portal, thrumming away in the space just off the edge of the precipice on which the castle was built. It was big enough to have driven a medium sized jet through with room to spare, and appeared to lead straight into Faerie. The librarian wasn’t in Faerie, but she was in the area around the portal to it, where time and magic streams got all jumbled up.

No wonder she was looking so freaked out. Spirits manifested bodies in Faerie. So, when the fey currents were hitting her, she turned solid, but when Earth’s were prevailing, she went back to her usual ghostly form. Which might also explain why the feedback loop had shut down.

It ran on demon magic, which Faerie ate for lunch.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Jonathan asked, coming back this way. I didn’t know what he meant, and didn’t care. I was looking at the phalanx of Svarestri he had with him, which he arrayed around Pritkin and me, except for the space opposite the portal. “Wouldn’t want to obstruct your view,” he told me kindly.

And then he belted Pritkin straight in the face.

I made a sound and tried to get up, but the guards held me back. And then made me watch an absolutely savage beating. It went on for long minutes, until Pritkin’s face looked less like a human’s and more like a pile of ground beef. I didn’t even know if he was conscious anymore when Jonathan finally let him go and turned toward me.

And then I found out, when Jonathan grabbed me by the hair and Pritkin launched himself at him, only to be hit by a spell from one of the guards that sent him flying back what must have been fifteen feet.

He hit down hard enough to stun him, several Svarestri lunged for him with spears out, and I screamed. But Jonathan held up a hand and they stopped short, before dragging Pritkin into the lineup with Mircea and the others. Where they proceeded to beat him into unconsciousness.

So much for his incubus and them being allies, I thought sickly, as Jonathan grabbed me again.

But I didn’t get a beating of my own, as I’d half expected. Instead, I was dragged over to the edge of the precipice, my contingent of guards coming along with me. But I wasn’t thrown off. Instead, Jonathan sat down next to me and opened a blue and white cooler.

“Beer? Soft drink?”

I stared at him and then at the cooler, which was full of ice, beverages, and a few sandwiches. He took out what looked like an egg salad on rye and began to munch it. Then he snared himself a beer and popped the top. He glanced at me and waggled the cooler again.

“Last chance.”

“W-what is this?” I asked.

“Best seat in the house. Least I could do for a Pythia.”

“Best seat to what?”

Jonathan patted my shoulder. He seemed to like to pat things. “Just watch.”

I watched.

The view through the portal was somewhere up high, another mountaintop probably, because the whole area appeared to be ringed by snow-capped peaks. Inside this natural barrier lay an expansive valley—cold, rocky and bare, except for some scattered villages here and there. And, in the middle of the plain, a great castle that gleamed in the sunlight.

It was more like a castle-sized city, and appeared to have been magicked up from the surrounding rock. Because the feel of it was totally different from the tiny fortress we were currently sitting in. There were no blocky towers or squared off edges. Instead, it looked more like a mountain had simply decided to grow in the approximate shape of a castle, with rounded, weathered protuberances interlaced with bridges and terraces made of what looked like ice.

It also had several rows of walls and defensive towers, at least a dozen drawbridges that were all currently closed up, and it bristled with anti-siege weapons. Not that it needed them. Because, milling about outside the castle, were what looked to be thousands upon thousands of manlikans. And when I say outside, I mean that they covered not only the area around the castle itself, but much of the valley as well, huge though it was.

Some looked like the stone sentinels that Mircea and I had fought—deliberate carvings made to look like soldiers, if soldiers were the size of skyscrapers. Many were new and pristine, their lines sharp and newly cut; others were old and crumbly, with weathered featured and pitted surfaces from too many storms. But all were huge and well-armed. They were arrayed in rows, like giant chess pieces, or like ranks of flesh and blood troops with perfect discipline.

Others were of the type that Pritkin and I had glimpsed once before on Aeslinn’s borders. Craggy, barely recognizable as humanoid, they looked more like the mountains from which they’d been made than actual people. But if you looked closely, you could see discernable arms, legs and heads.