Page 103 of The Catacomb King
Even the Vizeking cried, “No!”
“CALIX!” I screamed. I began to run after Hades. But Elke hooked her spider-legs into my dress, holding me back. “No!” she said urgently. “The soldiers —”
“What soldiers?!”
A rumbling from the throne room behind us. Elke and I whipped around. Sure enough, green-suited Iernian War Police were trickling in from the catacombs. They moved slowly, uncertainly. Something about them was almost drugged-looking. Perhaps they simply didn’t know where they were going, down here in the dark moving tunnels without Calix? And they were distracted by the jewels in the walls. But some part of their minds had to be aware of the freezing pull of the Lake, because they were stumbling this way…
“What do they want?” I gasped.
“Notthosesoldiers!” Elke nearly sobbed. “Ours!”
Ours?
Earlier, I’d wondered if the chaosgötten had a standing army, But even through my fear and confusion, I thought,There’s no way they’re organized enough for that.
The Vizeking had his lackeys, though.
And indeed, a few lackeys were sprinkled among Calix’s soldiers, their scarlet livery flashing among the sea of green uniforms like rubies in a pile of emeralds. I hadn’t seen them at first because they were moving low to the ground like spiders. Even the ones with human limbs scuttled like bugs. My skin crawled.
Why weren’t the lackeys and the War Police fighting with each other?
As I watched, I realized that the lackeys weren’t reallyamongthe soldiers. They were arranged in a loose arc behind them.
Herding them towards the Lake.
The King’s roar boomed behind me. I whirled around just in time to get splashed by an enormous wave of frigid Lake water. The King had cannonballed into the Lake. I searched frantically; where was Hades? There — a tiny flash of black and white. Hades had climbed onto his father’s back and was clinging to the spiky black crown atop his father’s head, yelling into his father’s ear.
I was briefly distracted by a flash of yellow. It was Calix’s bobbing blond head — and as I watched, agonized, ripped between him and Hades and the War Police, a wave of water engulfed him.
Calix’s head did not resurface.
My heart surged. He was a dick, but he was my dearest childhood friend — “HADES!” I screamed. “GET CALIX!”
Hades’s father reached one arm up and tried to rip Hades away as carelessly as if he were a mite. Hades grabbed his father’s hair to hang on. The King roared with pain.
I didn’t know what to do. Why hadn’t I ever learned to fucking swim? Elke had bolted to the shore, as close to Hades as she could get. She was crying out and scuttling agitatedly.
The Vizeking had moved to the shore, too. He was flapping his hands at the King. “Ignore him!” he screamed at the King. “Just wait six minutes! Then your first meal is right there!”
Meal?
My mother.
But…firstmeal?
Something was dawning on me, insistently. I tried to ignore it, focused as I was on the chaos and on Hades’s and Calix’s lives, but it rapped on my brain like it was important…
Frustrated and confused, I turned back to the soldiers. The confused, grumbling, pushing soldiers. Who were being herded into the Lake by the Vizeking’s lackeys.
They reminded me of something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what. And then I realized:
Green and clustered as they were, they looked like the picture of twisted trees growing around the mountain in my childhood book.
Which also reminded me of the duplicate picture in Hades’s book. That picture showed chopped-down stumps, clustered around an even bigger mountain.
And… in Hades’s version, the bigger mountain hadmoved.
After exactly one year.
