Free The Nothing: A Book of the Between by Kerry Schafer Page A

noses askew, cheekbones jutting and uneven. The eyes, though, were a beautiful sapphire blue.
    “Kraal,” said the Giant to the right. “What do you here?”
    “I come for an audience with Her Eminence.”
    “And your little friend?”
    Jared caught a hunger in the voice, the low purr of a cat confident of a dinner.
    “Under my protection.”
    “And what will you give as pledge, that you should bring one such as this before the Queen?”
    “I pledge my life.”
    “And in token of this pledge?”
    The words were formal and formulaic, with the ring of old custom, and Jared began to relax. Of course the guards looked imposing; it was their job to guard these doors, to monitor the traffic of all who would meet with the Queen. But in the end, it all came down to ritual and formula. Kraal knew what he was about.
    The guard held out her knife and Kraal took it from her. “As proof of my bond and my pledge,” he said, and then, with one sudden stroke, cut off his own right ear. Blood gushed, pouring in a red tide down the side of his head, staining his neck and shoulder.
    Kraal bowed and returned the knife to its keeper, and Jared realized, his heart battering his ribs with sudden terror, that the blade was not rusty but bloodstained, that this was not the first such use it had seen.
    The other Giant held out the stone jar, and into it Kraal dropped the severed ear.
    “I accept your bond. What price will your friend pay?”
    “He is under my protection. My life stands for his.”
    “Your pledge has been heard and accepted.”
    “Let it be so.”
    A child stepped forward from where she had been hidden behind a pillar, dressed like a Victorian doll in frills and lace, with a fur cape pinned at her breast by a giant emerald. Her hair fell in perfect raven ringlets framing a square, roughly hewn face. In her right hand she carried a golden triangle, in her left a baton of the same lustrous metal. Stationing herself between the two guards, she struck the triangle once, twice, and then a third time.
    As the sound pealed out, the doors swung open.
    Kraal let go of Jared’s hand and strode forward. Jared, confused and disoriented, stayed rooted to the ground, watching his host move away, until the child nudged him. “Go.”
    His feet began moving almost of their own accord and he stepped across the threshold into a light-filled room so splendid, he could barely take it in. No windows that he could see, and yet everything was permeated with a golden glow, as if the light came from the stone itself.
    Beneath his feet was a marble floor beyond imagining, inlaid with colored stone that formed images of Giants and dragons and other winged creatures, and doors of every imaginable size and shape. Flowers grew without any beds of soil that he could see, in fanciful arrangements that highlighted certain elements of the paving. Large trees graced the vast expanse, their trunks emerging from the floor with no visible space around them, and again no sign of earth.
    No time to look, though, because he was busy holding himself straight and walking as evenly as possible. A clear path, red stone like a carpet, led down the center of the room, bounded on each side by a low hedge of red flowers. A throng of Giants stood in ranks on either side, staring down at him out of expressionless faces.
    His knees wobbled, sweat crawled down his back in cold insect trails, but he kept moving, at first following Kraal’s back as his only landmark.
    And then he saw.
    A throne marked the end of the red stone path. It was impossible to tell of what it was originally constructed, it was so heaped with flowers. At first, Jared wondered whether they had been piled there or had grown on their own, and then it ceased to matter.
    On the throne, amid the flowers, sat the most beautiful being he had ever seen. She wore a short tunic of blinding white, cut low to reveal the perfect swell of her breasts. Her legs, her arms, they were as though sculpted of perfect