Something Wicked This Way Comes

The rain made the landscape view from the North tower appear like a fogged-over ocean; Queen Aisling could not determine where the sky ended and land began. Winter had been exceptionally cold that year, the chill bringing heavy rain that extended for days. Aisling pulled her black fur-lined coat closer over her chest but found comfort in the frosty wind that burned her nose and her neck numb.

It had been seven days since her husband had been declared dead.

Behind Aisling, the servant preparing the fire dismissed herself, bowing and gently closing the door. Aisling’s eyes were fixed on the invisible horizon that, without the wind and rain, would have revealed the mountainous terrain where the isolated city of Neyal dwelt and where her husband’s carriage had toppled. Neyal was the border city between Pleta and Lenai. Knights of both these kingdoms had endeavoured to recover the bodies of King Stefan and the twenty guardsmen that had been travelling with him. The sharp rocks and steep cliffside had made it impossible to recover no more than two survivors.

Today they marked the seventh day of grieving, or the day of return, for the kingdom of Lenai. The prayer flags and black banners would remain in the streets, and work would resume as normal for the citizens of the capital city, Camille – or as much as it could resume in the torrential weather.

Aisling, Queen by marriage and now by death, clutched a parchment letter in her thin hands, crinkling the paper. Her lips found rest in a frown, and her wrinkles deepened.

Aisling was a beautiful woman – Stefan had liked to boast that he had married the most beautiful woman in all of Lenai. She had grown up in the palace as the daughter of Lord Byron, one of the King’s advisors. Stefan had said it was love at first sight. Their courtship had been brief, and their marriage – which had begat seven wonderful children – would have celebrated its twentieth year.

Caspian, her eldest son, knocked on the door.

“Enter,” Aisling said, turning from the stone window and crossing to the fireplace.

Caspian entered. He looked so much like his father; bark-brown hair, tied at the neck, dressed in fur and leathers with a square jaw and pointed nose. Caspian was more Stefan’s son than Aisling’s; their daughters had inherited her auburn hair and delicate features.

“You wanted to see me?” Caspian asked. He stood at attention, instinctive from years of training with the knights. A rapier sat at his hip. Aisling knew he carried several concealed daggers like Stefan had always taught him.

Aisling’s fingers curled around the letter so tightly that, for a second, she thought it might tear. It had come at dawn from Neyal, and she had been pacing grooves into her stone floor, trying to determine the best way to break the news to Caspian. He had never been good at controlling his emotions. Ever since he was a little boy, he had often been in trouble with his father because he struck the knights too viciously.

“Word has come from Neyal,” she said, unable to look him in the eye. His posture relaxed, and he grinned, unable to help himself.

“From Iridessa?” He stepped closer to Aisling, reaching for the letter.

Princess Iridessa, the third daughter to the King of Pleta and betrothed to Caspian, had been staying in Neyal with her elder sister and mother in preparation for the final stretch of the journey to Camille. They were supposed to have begun their travel that morning, ready to arrive for the wedding in three weeks.

Aisling opened her mouth to respond, but the speech she had prepared – filled with comfort and support – felt silly. Instead, she handed Caspian the letter to read for himself. He took it eagerly, but his shoulders fell as he read.

Upon finishing, he crumpled the parchment and threw it into the fire.

“There must be a mistake,” he said.

“I have sent scouts—”

“There must be a mistake.” He pulled at his hair. “No. There—no.”

“Caspian—”

“No!”

The letter was short, as a message should be, but did not contain enough – and would never be enough – to satisfy Caspian’s grief.

           Neyal has fallen to an overnight plague. No survivors.

“I need to see her,” Caspian declared. His eyes were wide, crazed, and glazed over.

Aisling dark skirts swept over her boots as she crossed the room to him.

“No, Caspian. I have sent scouts to confirm from a distance. We cannot risk the plague reaching Camille. We must begin quarantine procedures—”

Caspian stepped back. “I have to see… maybe she… maybe she escaped. Or is still alive….”

“Just wait until we receive the report,” Aisling pleaded. She could not let her son just mindlessly run off; she could not lose him as well.

---

The report came the next morning. Aisling could sense Caspian’s restlessness the entire time, even through the thick castle walls. Word of Neyal’s fate spread through the castle quickly. Tatiana, Caspian’s elder sister, gave him a wide berth because she was not sensitive to emotion. The youngest and most empathetic, Brienne stuck to his side like a fairy following honey. The twins stopped bothering him.

The report came, and Aisling assembled the council – including Tatiana and Caspian. The council room was circular, with blue and red tapestries hanging from the ceiling and a large stone table. A kingdom map lay over the table. Ten assembled men and women looked to the two scouts who stood fidgeting as they confirmed the details of the original letter.

“Their bodies, your Highness…” the first scout, a weedy man in grey furs, said, “were sucked dry. Skeletons, they were.”

“Eyes gone,” the second scout, a burly woman also dressed in grey, added, “and frozen in horror.”

Aisling cast her eye to Caspian, who was looking stone-faced at the map.

“Thank you,” Aisling dismissed the scouts and then turned to the council. “We must begin our quarantine.”

“One last thing, Your Highness,” the female scout paused at the door. The knights on either side of the door straightened and raised their spears. Aisling held a hand, and the scout proceeded. “We didn’t think much of it, but a figure was in the forest. We saw him for a second, but it was like the trees were decaying around it. Freaky, it was.”

“Probably just a trick of the light,” the first scout said. “Take no thought, Highness. Poppy is mistaken.” He tugged his companion out of the room, and the knights closed the doors.

“Have the wizards search the records for anything that might explain the plague,” Aisling ordered. Gregory, the head wizard and scholar, nodded and made a note on his parchment. She also directed Tatiana to have the fairies prepare rations. “And guard every road into the city. I do not want anyone coming in or out of Camille.”

Council adjourned, and the members dispersed in groups, tittering between them about plans and preparations, until only Caspian, Tatiana and Aisling remained.

Aisling looked at her children. Tatiana was twirling her quill and staring at the map.

“What do you make of the final report?” Tatiana asked. Her voice was airy and soft from spending so much time with the fairies. “The one about the figure.”

“It could just be a trick of the scout’s imagination,” Aisling said.

“And the plague?”

Aisling shook her head. She had never heard of anything like it. A sickness that pulled the skin taut around the bones and removed the eyes. It sounded like something out of a fairy tale, the kind told to children to keep them in bed at night.

“I am sorry, Caspian,” Aisling said, touching her son’s shoulder. He shrugged her off.

“This is no plague, Mother. There must be something wrong with the magic in Neyal.”

“Eyes missing…” Tatiana mused. “It does sound like a magical rebound.”

Magic came from one’s eyes which were windows into the soul, like a well of knowledge and power. Some, like fairies and wizards, had more magic than others. Few humans were predisposed to an affiliation, but all were connected to the magic that ran through the land.

Stefan had been magically gifted since he was young. Before he died, he had performed a spell that cured the land of a seven-year famine. Aisling should find that spell, she thought, in case she needed to use it again during her reign.

“The wizards are looking into it,” Aisling said. “For now, we prepare for the worst.”

The next few days passed in a blur. The city went into immediate quarantine, with trade and commute grinding to a halt. The roads and bridges were blocked, and rations were arranged.

Then, on the third day, the nearby farmland was attacked.

They only received word because a survivor ran to the barricade on the south bridge at night, yelling and blabbering about a monster that had killed his family, reducing them to skeletal forms.

“It’s dark, like shadows! And it wears this mask like a deer’s skull.”

The knights at the barricade sent word back to the castle, but by the time reinforcements arrived in the morning, the barricade was broken.

The wood stakes had toppled over. Armoured bodies lay, discarded, with their eye sockets dark and empty and their cheeks pulled tight against their bones.

One knight positioned in the lower city during the famine described the state of his fallen brethren as “complete and utter starvation”. Others described it as the devil’s retribution.

Word got out that the south bridge had fallen and spread like wildfire through the city. Citizens demanded immediate evacuation, but there were not enough ships in the east port. Some unsuccessfully stormed the north barricade.

Night fell slowly over the city.

The screams came quickly.

Aisling sent squadrons south of the city, where fires erupted on the streets. Looking out the south tower, the horizon was lit with yellow and orange under the cloudy sky. Screams echoed through the darkness, and steel against steel was heard underneath it.

“Mother,” Brienne’s little voice said from behind her, “I am frightened.”

Aisling wrapped her arm around her daughter and continued to watch.

Caspian barged into the room.

“This thing,” he said, breathless, “is tearing through the city. Nothing can stop it.”

“What is it?” Aisling asked, her voice fierce. What was destroying her city?

The twins came through the door next, scuttling around their brother.

“It is eating,” Pollak started.

“The magic,” Irene finished. Pollak waved around a leather-bound book.

“The spell Father cast,” Pollak said. “It is supposed to cure famine.”

“But it warns of side effects,” Irene said, “including the summoning of the spirit of starvation.”

Aisling held up her hands. “Slow down,” she said – as she often did when it came to these two, always talking over each other and never slowing to take a breath.

“It is a spirit sent by the god of famine,” Pollak said.

“Because Father crossed into his domain,” Irene finished.

Pollak offered the book to Aisling. She flicked to the bookmarked page. The yellow parchment crinkled as she ran a finger down the ink-scrawled paragraphs and pictograms depicting grotesque gods and spells.

“Is there a way to stop it?” Caspian asked, his hand on the hilt of his rapier, ready to charge into battle. Aisling shook her head. The spell Stefan had read was powerful, and there were indeed warnings for casting it. The twins were right – they were facing a magic-eating monster, and its hunger would never be satisfied.  

“We need to evacuate,” Aisling said, closing the book. “Caspian, send word to the palace staff and find Tatiana. The rest of you, head to the ships.”

The screams and crackles of the fire were getting closer. Aisling looked out the window again and saw smoke crossing the castle wall.

“We will never make it to the east in time,” Caspian argued. “The roads will be blocked with crowds.”

“Take the tunnels,” Aisling ordered. Each of her children’s faces stared at her with a mixture of horror, fear, and distress. “Go!”

They moved. Caspian ushered the twins out ahead of him. Brienne clutched Aisling’s skirts, babbling through tears about leaving her, but Caspian returned and lifted her away. Aisling could not be sure she would see them again – she would try, by all the gods, she would – but she would not let her last words to them be false promises.

More screams. Aisling swept through the castle to the west wing, where the scholar's library lived. Gregory was hunched over a desk under waning candlelight, scouring piles of parchment and books.

“Gregory,” Aisling said, and the wizard jumped. She slammed the book on top of his pile. “Find me a way to reverse this spell.”

Gregory pushed his spectacles up his nose and started to stammer, but there was no time for his questions.

“The castle is evacuating. A monster approaches. As soon as you find the solution, cast it,” Aisling said, “whatever it takes.”

Aisling left with a sweep of her skirts, locking the door behind her. The security spells on the library were triggered, and protection wards went up. Now, only those permitted could enter, which would buy Gregory time.

The castle was already quieter. There were still sounds from the outside, yells and steel and fire, but the deeper she went into the stone, the more muffled the sounds became.

A draft whistled through the dark corridor leading down to her exit. Aisling’s footsteps became the only sound she could hear, her boots against the stone. She approached the secret passageway in the stone that led into the tunnels beneath the city. Her children should be already halfway through. 

Except… there was another sound. Just before she pressed the mechanism, she heard it –staggered footsteps like someone with a limp. Aisling was about to call out and confirm who was there, but she stopped. Fingers of fear snagged her tongue, and she waited, unable to move, as the footsteps came closer.

It came around the corner. It was made of darkness, but the form was skeletally human. Long and tall, with limbs stretched thin and a polished white deer’s skull as its head.

Every muscle in Aisling’s body clenched, her hand poised over the stone that would open the passageway. Frozen, she watched the creature – the monster – stagger closer.

It looked down it’s skull at her with empty eye sockets, antlers reaching the ceiling, and stopped just out of her reach.

They breathed together.

“Aas…” It whined like a high-pitched squeaking of metal against metal. “Aaash…”

Aisling drew her hand back and stepped away. It was as far as she could get before the monster said a complete word.

“Aisling.”

It knew her name. She let out a whimper in a moment of weakness.

“Aisling,” it drew her name out in a longer whine. Now it sounded like a child. “Love.”

It reached for her. She drew away but tripped on her skirts. Over she went, falling onto the cold stone. It’s arm loomed over her, and as it came closer, the shadows of its form melted away, revealing leathers and furs. The skull cracked and crumbled into ash.

Stefan reached for her, his dark eyes sunken and hollow. His skin was ash-grey, with blue veins running black under his skin. His teeth were crooked when he said her name again.

Aisling screamed as her dead husband touched her face, and the starving spirit found a new host.

---

Bodies lay across the pavement, seemingly asleep in the dull moonlight.

The monster, made of bone and dark matter, walked slowly through the east streets of the city. Its shoulders were hunched with a slight limp. It was not used to the new body. Female, humanoid.

The monster was heading to the next target, the next city, already hungry.

Soon it would be starving. Then the cycle would begin again.