Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,37
of it failed to reach her.
Widdershins vomited a gout of bile-tinted blood and then stared up at Lisette in utter bewilderment.
The older woman was cloaked in ribbons of nothingness, maddened worms of shadow that slithered and humped about her.
One of those lengths of shade had snaked its way between them, caressing the edges of Widdershins's wound, doubtless the source of that frigid relief.
“We can't have you overcome yet, little scab,” Lisette taunted her. “Not until the others have had the chance to meet you.”
“O-others?”
“Oh, yes. They've been almost as eager for this as I have.”
Those writhing shadows erupted to either side of Lisette, somewhere between a billowing cloak and widespread wings. The lanterns flickered and dulled, the light itself seeming to recoil, and the air was abruptly redolent with cinnamon and vanilla and other sweets.
From within those shadows, an array of figures formed.
The first was a silhouette only vaguely human, a lithely muscled man with skin the mottled colors of a stagnant marsh and the legs of a giant frog. His head was bald, and the corners of his lips reached all the way to his ears. Even in her state, Shins shuddered at the thought of that mouth opening wide, and of what might lie within.
He—it?—was followed by a young woman, pirouetting on long, slender legs. She was clad in a dress of leaves, and her hair was red—not the simple ginger of Lisette's own, but as deep and rich as rose petals. Her eyes, when she paused in her twirling to glare at Shins, were tree bark, and the fingers of both hands were long rosebush stems with vicious thorns.
And finally, the last, though this one was accompanied by his own entourage. Lanky of form and greasy of hair, he looked no older than Shins herself, yet there was something of the ancient about him. His left hand boasted long, slender switches where its fingers should have been, and his eyes were mirrors in which Shins saw her own reflection, but not Lisette's.
Crawling at his heels, moaning with every breath, were half a dozen children—or child-shaped creatures. Their flesh was maggot-pale, their eyes no more than gaping hollows into a seemingly endless darkness, their jaws distended around long and jagged teeth. They wore only old and tattered rags, all save one: from her neck alone dangled a silver pendant, badly tarnished, in the shape of an elegant swan.
Through it all, Olgun shrieked his fear and his warnings, to which Shins could offer no response at all.
“My dear friends, this is Widdershins,” Lisette announced grandly, “to whom we owe thanks for bringing us together. Widdershins, these are my new friends. Do you understand why they're here?”
It wasn't, even in her current condition, hard to puzzle out. “Iruoch…” she whispered, blood dribbling from one side of her lips.
As if in response, somewhere off in the distance, in a direction that had nothing to do with any compass, an entire chorus of children babbled.
“Very good,” the older woman congratulated with joviality so false it should have qualified as counterfeiting. “They're not really here, of course. Iruoch was invited, however accidentally. My friends were not, and the Church presence is still a bother to them. We're taking care of that, though, aren't we, my dears?”
The ghostly children cooed; the trio of fae nodded in unison.
“In the interim, they ride the magics they've bestowed upon me,” Lisette continued, now clearly bragging. “Lets them manifest in Davillon for small periods of time. And they so wanted to be here for you, specifically.”
Shins figured she was supposed to ask why and kept her teeth clenched tight. She wouldn't offer the satisfaction.
“For the same reason,” Lisette said, as though she actually had asked, “we've eased the pain of your injury.
“Part of our bargain is that I let them in on the fun, you see.”
The adolescent-looking fae with the reflective eyes advanced, then, the lashes on his left hand twitching, writhing, living tendrils of inhuman hatred.
“I wonder,” Lisette pondered aloud, “if their tender ministrations will kill you before you have the chance to bleed to death. I wonder if they'll feel it when a god dies.”
Not like this. It wasn't supposed to go like this. I'm so sorry, Olgun…
The vile creature raised its hand to strike, but Shins couldn't even see it through her tears.
This time, the dream was different.
Bishop Sicard awoke screaming, his cheeks glistening and his beard soaked with tears. Still he'd seen no recognizable images, gleaned no clear meaning from the baroque nightmare.
He knew