Free Seven Kings: Books of the Shaper: Volume 2 by John R. Fultz Page B

of blood lingered heavy in the air. The blood of Giantesses. The bodies of six Uduri lay torn and scattered about the chamber. Six Uduri lying dead on the rugs of his daughter’s room. The scream had come from a human serving maid who cowered in the corner and sobbed along with the Giantesses. Their big hands were bathed in the blood of their sisters. Their faces were pallid masks of horror.
    “Maelthyn!” Vireon called her name as he stalked between the corpses. Stomachs and chests were torn open. He knew without even looking that every one of their hearts was missing. His own heart threatened to burst out of his chest.
    Where is she? Where—
    He found her sitting calmly near the open window, forgotten by the grieving Uduri. Her tiny face was dark with blood. It dripped from her fingers. She wore a fine little gown of green and yellow silks, now gone black and sticky with gore. Maelthyn stared at her father, as unblinking as Vod’s effigy of bronze.
    “Maelthyn … ”
    She said nothing, as if she had momentarily forgotten that name altogether.
    Vireon grabbed her in his arms, checking her skin for cuts or bruises. There were none. She stared at him with eyes blank as stones, dark blue and sparkling. Her soft little body was intact, despite the bloody baptism.
    The wails of the two Uduri guards filled the chamber. How long had it been since one of them had perished? Centuries at least. And now six were slain in a single night. But by what power?
    He squeezed Maelthyn close to his chest and whispered comfort in her ear.
    The curse had reached its claws into his house, into the very bosom of his family.
    Alua ran wide-eyed and fierce into the bloodstained room. She wrapped her arms about Maelthyn as a squad of guardsmen flooded into the chamber. Mother, father, and daughter stood for a while, locked in a terrified embrace, while Giantess tears fell to mingle with the expanding pools of crimson.
    “We stood outside while our sisters died,” moaned a Giantess. “We saw nothing. The door would not open … ” Their dark eyes pleaded at Vireon for justice, or vengeance, or both.
    Only when the Uduri ceased their wailing and began to gather up the bodies of their sisters did little Maelthyn begin to blink her eyes again. Alua removed her daughter’s bloody dress and carried her to a basin of water for washing. Vireon stayed close. Guardsrushed about the chamber and the palace looking for signs of intruders that they would never find.
    Alua looked at Vireon as she rubbed Maelthyn’s cheek with a wet cloth. He had never seen that look in his wife’s eyes before. Terror it was, but also accusation.
You failed to keep our daughter safe. You, the Giant-King! Son of Vod! You failed!
She said none of these things, but he heard them anyway. They echoed louder in his skull than the wailing of the Uduri.
    “Father?” Maelthyn’s tiny voice broke the silence between King and Queen. Vireon lowered his face to hers, took her petite hands in his massive ones.
    “Yes, Little One, I’m here,” he said. “You are safe now.”
    How could he lie to her? He had no choice.
    “The shadows … ” said Maelthyn, turning her sapphire eyes at him. “The shadows came to play.”
    Once more he took her in his arms. He squeezed her as tightly as he dared. She was so small and so very frail, his little Maelthyn. Alua wept then, but still her daughter shed no tears.
    “They came for
me
, Father,” Maelthyn whispered in his ear. “I let them in.”

4
Wings
    A t night she was an owl, flying high above the tangled swamp. The full moon stared at itself in the pools and fens of black water. Darkness swelled and writhed in the morass of weed, mud, and moss. The great mire was thick with vipers, slippery and venomous. If she were a true owl, she might swoop and grab one or two of them in her talons and feast on the sour flesh. In the back of her mind such owl-thoughts swam like tiny fish in the murky marsh pools. Yet she only stopped her