Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(115)
Lily locked the iron-and-diamond cuffs around her wrists as she ran to her pyre. Rowan ran beside her, pulling her crown out of his satchel. When they got to the base he carried her up the uneven mountain of cut logs to the stake waiting at the top. Lily had never seen a pyre this high before.
“I have an ax crew stationed below with Breakfast to keep the fire well fed,” Rowan told her hastily. He started threading the chains on the stake through the rings on Lily’s cuffs. “Tristan will keep a squadron of raptors over you to repel any air attacks by the Warrior Sisters. Una will lead the Pride and the ranch hands on the left flank. Alaric, the Outlanders, and the Pack will be to the right. I’m leading the insect Woven straight up the middle.”
“How will you lead them?” Lily asked. “The insects don’t understand language.”
“I’ve become stone kin with all the queens,” Rowan said with a troubled look on his face. Lily stared at him, knowing how much it cost him to do that. “The point is,” he continued, “they’d have to get through our entire army before they could get to you—”
Lily put her hands over Rowan’s and made him look up at her. “I love you.”
“And I love you.” He placed the blackened crown on her head and kissed her hard, crushing her against him. “I’ll be with you,” he whispered, and then turned and climbed down.
Lily looked up. She could hear her chains, her breath, and the wind. High above her the tops of the redwoods rubbed up against the storm-dark sky. Thirty feet below, her army went about their frenetic last-minute arrangements for battle. Weapons were checked. Ranks were ordered. Strategies were concocted. Former enemies became stone kin to coordinate in battle. Only Lily stood alone. Waiting to burn.
She smelled it first—just a hint of smoke teased out from the pulpy smell of the wood, and then suddenly there was so much smoke she was choking on it. Her eyes streamed as she coughed and sputtered, her body bent double as she hung in her chains. The heat rose, and Lily knew three full seconds of terror.
Gift me, Rowan called out in mindspeak.
The heat began to build until Lily was shrieking. A hurricane wheel of her own began to form over the creaking redwoods until a boom sounded out and light shot up from Lily’s smoke willstone.
It’s nearly time, Lily, Lillian called. When the Hive has committed all its forces to fighting my soldiers in the center, send yours out of the grove on all sides to surround us.
I understand, Lily replied. Lily could feel Lillian’s exultation in the throes of battle with her army, but her body was weak, and she was burning more than she should. Lillian. There’s something you need to know about the bomb.
You can’t convince me not to use it, Lillian replied.
I know. That’s why I had Carrick dismantle it.
Lily felt Lillian’s dismay, and then she Gifted her army and sent the screaming horde of men, women, and Woven onto the battlefield.
Toshi jerked to a halt when he heard the boom. He saw a third beam of light shoot into the bruised sky and knew that Lily’s army had taken the field. Dread consumed him. They wouldn’t last long if he didn’t kill the Queen.
Toshi could feel echoes of agony and ecstasy from the rest of Lily’s claimed as they hurled themselves into battle, and his feet turned on their own and started running. Feeling Lily’s power in him, Toshi reached Hearing Hall in moments.
He ran through the forest of columns, a petrified echo of the redwoods surrounding Lily, and went to the door that opened into nothing. He tied the climbing ropes together and used them to ease himself down into the darkness. When he reached the end of his rope he let himself drop.
His magelight blazed out as he fell. When he finally hit the floor, he picked himself up and started running again.
Lily exulted.
She bounded across the field with her fearless Pride. She soared through the air with her fierce raptors. She swarmed across the ground with her frozen-souled insects. She led the charge with Rowan onto the field, thundering toward the struggling and dying Walltop soldiers, delirious with mad joy, and almost went back on her word. As Rowan tore into the leading edge of Warrior Sisters with his battalion of queens, Lily felt herself sliding toward taking all of him.
There was a part of him that wanted it, too. He wanted to know what it was to burn on the pyre. It was for this reason alone she resisted, even when he wouldn’t have. She couldn’t let Rowan burn.
Warrior Sisters cracked their cat-o-nine-tails whips, and when they couldn’t use their whips they fought with their bare hands. Their movements were blindingly fast and brutal. They did not fight with punches and kicks, but rather they grabbed on to an opponent’s limb and tried to rip it off or they’d fly up as high as they could, let go of their struggling victim, and let gravity do the killing for them. They attacked in concert with their Sisters, but they were as brutal with one another as they were with their victims. If one was losing a fight, the others did not waste their efforts on a lost cause. If one was winning, others joined her to end it quickly.
Workers swarmed, and they were felling Lillian’s uninoculated soldiers by the dozens. Their swollen bodies hardly looked human, and the sight of them angered Lily. She contacted Tristan, who was engaged in an aerial battle with the Warrior Sisters.
Tristan—fly into the city, she ordered. Gather rebels with crossbows. Shoot the swarms from raptorback.