Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde #3)

3rd January

We assembled at the stables in the early morning, as soon as the dawn light began to spill over the lake—Wendell, Lord Taran, Lord Wherry, and I, together with half a dozen guards and one of Lord Taran’s scouts. I had left Shadow to sleep in, for I sensed he had not yet recovered from our long trek through Wendell’s realm. With us instead—poorer substitutes there never have been—were Razkarden, perched above us in the tree-shadow like a waking nightmare, and Snowbell. Against my better judgment, the little fox-faerie had convinced me to carry him on my shoulder. I suspect he took his inspiration from Razkarden, for whom he has a twisted sort of reverence; Snowbell, though, cut a rather less intimidating figure than the spectral owl, despite his oversized teeth. I thought it likely that Farris Rose would not long be the only one-eared Cambridge scholar on record.

There was also one less willing traveller in our party.

Wendell’s sister sat atop one of the monstrous faerie horses, a guard stationed to either side. She looked to be about fourteen or fifteen, with enormous, jewel-blue eyes rimmed by long brown hairs like moths’ antennae, and golden tresses that were remarkably like Wendell’s, though Deilah’s reached her chin and floated about her face in becoming waves. She was barefoot, and her dress was dirty and ripped—I understood from Wendell that she had torn it herself, and refused to change. She presented a miserable picture with her tear-stained cheeks and downturned face, though she sat up straight in the saddle, as if to prove herself unbowed by her distress.

Wendell did not even spare his sister a glance, but strode into the stables with Lord Wherry, who had been invited as a representative of the Council. I stood there awkwardly for a moment, wondering how on earth I should navigate this particular thicket of brambles, long enough for Snowbell to bore of me; he hopped to the ground to preen in a patch of sun.

“Hello,” I said, my voice sliding up at the end, as if it were a question. I felt unaccountably nervous, addressing this forlorn child. But then, I had never met any of Wendell’s blood relatives before. He had none to meet, apart from Deilah.

It was that thought that led me to add, softly, “I am sorry that we should meet under such circumstances.”

The girl turned to me, and her inhuman eyes widened in astonishment. “Such a plain little mouse!” she exclaimed. “I had heard my brother had strange taste, but I wasn’t expecting this. And they have dressed you up like one of us—how embarrassing for you.”

She began to snicker, and to my dismay, I felt my face grow hot. “I merely came to see if you were comfortable,” I said stiffly.

“How sweet!” she said, her eyes glittering with amusement. Her voice, though, was kind as she added, “Well, since you asked, if you could fetch me one of those flowers, I’d appreciate it ever so much. I would like to have something to wear in my hair, as my brother hasn’t let me have my jewels.”

I looked down at the flowers she was indicating. They lay by the side of the path and resembled a meadowsweet, but in a vivid shade of red. I gave her a suspicious look, thinking she meant to kick me, but the flowers were just out of range of her boot. I knelt and plucked several blooms, and as I did, I felt something brush the top of my head. Thinking it was merely one of the errant leaves scattered by the wind, I rose and handed the girl the flowers.

“Thank you,” she said, pressing her hand to her mouth. It was only when I had gone to sit upon a bench to wait for Wendell that I felt something wriggle in my hair.

Choking down a shriek, I yanked the thing out, coming away with several strands of my hair at the same time. It was a fat, spotted centipede. A shudder wracked my body as I tossed it aside.

“How on earth did she get her hands on that?” I grumbled to Lord Taran, who had come to see what I was fussing about.

“Hold still,” he said with a sigh, and plucked three more centipedes from my hair. “There.”

“Thank you,” I said, my cheeks hot.

“Perhaps, my queen,” he said in a dry voice, crushing the insects under his boot, “you might enlighten me: why we are bringing that charming little moppet along?”

“We cannot kill her,” I said. “Doing so may harm Wendell. And yet she is Wendell’s main rival for the throne, and has already come close to assassinating him once, so we must destroy the risk she poses to us somehow. Therefore, I would like to try to win her to our side. Perhaps if we show her evidence of her mother’s wickedness, and the damage it has done to the realm, she will reconsider her loyalties.”

“My,” Lord Taran said, “just listening to that has given me a headache. That is the benefit of old age—one loses all interest in politics.”

I examined him, his glossy dark hair and smooth skin, the perfect bow of his lips. He looked to be a man in his early twenties—an age at which there remained a hint of boyishness in his face, and I wondered if he had chosen it as a joke. “How old are you?” I said, just to see how he would sidestep the question.

To my surprise, he said simply, “That question doesn’t apply. I am from an era before time.”

It took me a moment to comprehend what he was saying. “You are—older than this realm?”

“I am older than any realm.” His gaze slid to my cloak. “Save one.”

I had to remind myself to breathe as dozens of questions swarmed through my head. “You cannot mean that.”

“Can’t I? Well, I suppose you’re right, Professor Wilde—you can never trust the Folk.” He raised his eyebrows in mock innocence and turned to attend to his mount, a towering black stallion. I stared at the back of his handsomely tousled hair—surely it was impossible. Wasn’t it?

“Yet you are not so old as to be above tormenting scholars,” I muttered.

He gave a surprised laugh. “You know,” he said musingly, “I was not enthusiastic at the prospect of my nephew inheriting the throne, and for the most part, I remain unimpressed by him, even if he is not quite so feckless as he once was.”

“He will make a better ruler than his stepmother,” I interjected. “A kingdom perpetually consumed with war is no kingdom at all. Your soldiers were dying; the small Folk were terrorized night and day. Do you truly not care about such things?”

He adjusted his horse’s saddle. “I truly do not. As I was saying—as highly as you esteem your husband, I have never seen anything exceptional in him. As a child, his magical talents were ordinary, and certainly there were many wiser and braver—and less indolent—candidates for the throne, including at least two of his siblings. But you, Emily—you appear to be an entertaining queen.”

“I am not truly a queen, for Wendell and I are not married yet,” I said, flustered. How I wished this man would simply ignore me, like the rest of his court! Perhaps his attention would have inspired less anxiety had I not recently watched him cleave a tree in two with a single blow.

Something in my tone summoned that familiar malicious gleam in his eyes. “Oh dear,” he said. “Does someone have cold feet? Is our king perhaps a disappointment in other respects?”

“ No, ” I said, growing only more flustered. “My feet were never warm to begin with, on the marriage subject. It has nothing to do with Wendell.”

He made no reply to this, but I could see from the delight in his gaze, like a cat spying a wounded bird in the grass, that this was not the last I would hear on the matter. You’ve put your foot in it now, I thought with a sense of impending doom.

I turned to look at the lake; we stood beside a path that rambled down to its shore, where there was a beach of sand and stone. Sun sparkles danced blithely upon the water, as if it too were laughing at me.

Wendell finally emerged from the stables. Behind him came two servants, one of which was leading a creature that, it was only too clear, was my intended mount.

“Oh God,” I said faintly.

The fox was smaller than the faerie horses—not a comfort, I assure you, given that it was still far larger than any fox had a right to be. Its coat was a rich auburn, lighter on the chest and belly, and its massive ears flopped like a dog’s. It was a heavyset beast, a saddle encircling its rounded belly, but its legs were thickly muscled.

Snowbell clambered back onto my shoulder with an appalled squeak and gnashed his teeth in the creature’s direction. “Stop that,” I admonished. “I will put you down.”

“What do you think, Em?” Wendell said, smiling. “Does Red Wind meet with your approval? I promise she will give you no trouble whatsoever. But you may have your pick of the horses, if you prefer.”

“That—that’s all right,” I said. Now that the initial shock had passed, I found myself relaxing a little. The prospect of riding Red Wind was at least tolerable, unlike the thundering faerie horses, who were perhaps more alarming in how they confounded my expectations. I had no expectations where horse-sized foxes were concerned.

Wendell patted Red Wind’s flank, and the massive creature yawned—her teeth were the length of my hand—and blinked her liquid black eyes at me. After a moment’s hesitation, I reached out to rub her forelock, and she leaned into my hand with a guttural snort that made me start.

“As for you,” Wendell said, turning to gaze at his sister thoughtfully. He wore black riding boots and gloves, and had exchanged his horrible grumbling cloak for a non-sentient one of darkest green, a match for the silvered leaves the servants had woven into his hair that morning, which sat so naturally amongst the golden waves that they might have sprouted from his scalp. He needed no crown to signify his title—even the trees and grasses seemed to bend towards him—and I could see that even his sister sensed it, which perhaps accounted for the ferocity of the glare she levelled at him.

“The kindness of your queen has granted you a respite from the dungeons,” Wendell told her. “You are being given an opportunity to regret your loyalty to our mother. Thus, good behaviour on your part is not an expectation, but a requirement.”

“Blah, blah, blah” was the child’s reply. “You’re as boring as one of them now. Like a mortal pretending to be Folk. Why don’t you just go back to their world, brother?”

Wendell’s eyes narrowed. “You, on the other hand, have only grown more like the old queen. Or, rather, a poor copy—plenty of spite and jealousy, but lacking her imagination.”

The girl’s face went white. “The true queen will have you quartered and hung from the battlements, along with those stupid mortals you care so much for.”

“Your opinion of mortals is so low,” Wendell said. “Yet one of them was your mother’s undoing. How does it feel to be proven a fool?”

“My mother is not dead,” she spat, and for a moment I thought she was going to lunge at him. “She cares too much about the realm to—to—”

“To die?” Wendell gave a quiet laugh. “If only there were protection in that! Alas. Our father cared a great deal for the realm, too. But then, you were too young—I doubt you remember him much. Well, let us go and see what our mother’s malice has wrought upon her beloved realm, and then we shall see if there is anything in you but her worst qualities.”

He turned his back on her. She seemed to be struggling to come up with a retort, and instead stuck her tongue out at him. I could see, though, that she was holding back tears.

“Was that necessary?” I muttered as he came over to me.

He sighed, looking vexed. “Children are so tedious!”

It seemed to me that Deilah was uniquely adept at eroding his good humour, but I did not point this out. “Wendell, if we meet your stepmother—”

“You shall not have to deal with her again, Em—leave her to me.” He examined my face. “What is it?”

I shook my head. I had read through several dozen Irish folktales the previous evening, comparing and contrasting; I did not care for the pattern that I saw emerging here, that was as much as I knew.

“Nothing,” I said, trying to quell the foreboding. “Only I wish your stepmother was already dead.”

“It would be tidier,” he agreed. “But she is far too complicated a person to make things easy for anyone, even on her deathbed.”

All the guards were saddled and ready, and so Wendell helped me onto Red Wind. Then he mounted his horse, and we were off.

—

At first we followed a broad path, wide enough for two mounts to walk abreast, but as we drew farther from the castle the path narrowed, and we travelled single file. Red Wind was so wide that the boughs brushed against her sides, until Wendell flicked his hand and added another foot or two to the path.

I did not much care for my drayfox. I did not say so to Wendell, but I began to think I would have preferred one of the faerie horses after all. Red Wind did not bump or jostle me, as a horse would, and therein lay the problem: her gait was too smooth. I felt as if I were being carried upon a well-tempered cloud, albeit one prone to sudden, violent sneezes and wet snorts.

I found myself noticing familiar plants and features as we travelled through the woods. Some brownies, for instance, had stone dwellings built into the earth—closer to cellars than houses, to my eye—roofed in densely interwoven fern fronds. Doubtless others dwelt in the canopy, for when I looked up, I saw the telltale silver gleam of impossibly narrow bridges connecting the trees like spiderthread. But as we moved away from the castle, I saw less of this glittering architecture, and more of the humble, cellarlike variety. I also noted that I was growing increasingly adept at spotting moss-brownies, as I had begun to call them in my head, for the mossy caps they wore. These small, black-eyed creatures, whose bodies were often covered in moss as well, could be seen peeking at us from behind branches, or sometimes in plain view upon a green stone or bough, where they were surprisingly difficult to detect.

I realized, to my amazement, that I was beginning to grow comfortable here. In the Silva Lupi! Farris would never approve.

I could not fully appreciate any of this, however; I was too anxious about what we would find in the forest. And so I availed myself of the opportunity provided by Red Wind’s uncanny lope to work on my book.

I had not been scribbling in my notebook for five minutes before Lord Taran advanced his mount to ride alongside me, the path expanding to accommodate him.

“What on earth are you writing?”

“A book,” I replied shortly.

“A book!” he cried. “With a kingdom to rule, and a vengeful rival on the loose, our queen is occupying herself with trivial matters of scholarship?”

“Yes,” I said, and pointedly made another note.

He smiled and drew his horse closer to me, affecting polite interest. “What is the book about?”

“The politics of faerie courts,” I said, wishing very much that he would leave me alone with my trivial scholarship.

He wrinkled his nose.

“I apologize if it is beneath the interest of an ancient faerie lord,” I said.

Unfortunately, I seemed to have amused him again, and instead of going away, he said, “But what is the point of it all?”

I gave him a blank look, pretending I did not comprehend. Really I just didn’t want to be drawn into an epistemological debate with him—or a debate of any sort, really. I suppose it was unscholarly of me; I should have leapt at an opportunity to interview such an exemplar of the courtly fae. But the man had tried to kill Wendell, much as the two seemed to have forgotten about it.

“Your profession,” he clarified. “And Niamh’s. The projects you two are always scribbling away at.”

“Perhaps you should ask Niamh. She might enjoy the conversation.”

“Oh dear,” he said. “We have gotten off on the wrong foot, haven’t we?”

“I can’t imagine why.” I sighed and tucked the pen into my notebook. “The point of my scholarship is to understand the Folk. To the extent that we mortals can.”

“It has never struck you as a futile endeavour?”

“No more than any other branch of science.” I gestured at the sky. “What can mortals learn of the stars, given that we cannot walk among them? Yet we try.” I opened my notebook again. “Others have argued that it is the endeavour itself that is the point of scholarship. I am not so certain of that, for I can never stop yearning for new discoveries. Even the smallest are as precious jewels to me.”

I could not be certain he understood me. After a moment, he said, “Why must mortals always be solving mysteries? What is the point of life if everything is pinned and labelled in some display case? You scholars should aim to discover more mysteries, not untangle them.”

“How sibylline,” I said. “That is ever so helpful, thank you.”

He gave a delighted laugh, and then, to my immense relief, he rode on ahead, leaving me alone in the sanctuary of my research.

It should have been a lengthy journey. Instead, we reached our destination before a single hour had elapsed.

“This should not be,” Lord Taran said, frowning as he leapt from his horse. “The corrupted grove should be fifty miles from the southern lakeshore—we have come ten, if that.”

“A new outbreak?” suggested Lord Taran’s scout, a severe man with two crossed swords upon his back and a scar that divided his face from temple to chin.

“I don’t see anything,” I said. The countryside was mixed woodland and moor, somewhat more open than the lands Wendell and I had passed through on our way to the castle. Rain so fine it was almost mist drifted through the trees like crowds of ghosts. I saw nothing but green flora, and heard only birdsong and the occasional snort from my mount. Something was off—though I could not pinpoint what it was.

“What a stink!” Snowbell said from my shoulder. He pinched his nose and added in a nasal voice, “I will not go near that .”

“Near what?” I said, frustrated by my limited mortal senses. Snowbell made no reply, simply hopped to the ground and slunk into a foxhole.

Wendell slid gracefully from his horse and strode ahead. He pushed aside the bough of an attentive oak, which blinked furiously and glared at him, and disappeared through the trees.

“Yes, go marching into danger alone,” Lord Taran muttered. “Like father, like son.” He dismounted, motioning to Razkarden and two of the guards, and together they followed Wendell.

Lord Wherry remained sat on his drayfox, looking anxious. He seemed to be in his fifties; the Folk can appear any age they choose, and some prefer to look wise. Naturally, his lined face was still beautiful, his greying brown hair thick and long enough to wear in a plait. It was difficult to imagine him killing anyone, for there was a boyishness about his large eyes and round face that belied his apparent age, but in the opposite direction than was usual for most Folk.

I dismounted to a chorus of disgusting snorts from Red Wind. I paused beside Deilah, who had been surrounded by the remaining guards. “Would you like to come with me?”

“What does it matter what I want?” she said, turning her chin aside. Her eyes were red and swollen, as if she had been crying the entire journey. “Imprisoned princesses have as much say in their destinies as leaves in the wind.”

Good grief. This girl had Wendell’s talent for melodrama, that was clear. “Very well. Then I will choose for you: help her down.”

The guards obliged me, and together we followed Wendell and Taran up the little rise to a grove of yew trees. At first, I thought it was mist before me. It hovered over the forest floor, and wisps of it climbed the trees like ghostly ivy. It seemed thicker than mist, however, unpleasantly so; I felt certain I would become stuck wading through that, like an insect in syrup.

The trees, meanwhile, looked ghastly. Their trunks were covered in scabs and strange protrusions, like infected sores. Wendell was frowning at them, absently twirling a lily he had plucked from the forest path.

“Lilies make charming wedding bouquets, Your Highness,” Lord Taran said in an innocent voice, while smiling snidely at me behind Wendell’s back.

I treated him to my most heartfelt of glares. Wendell blinked at his uncle, then examined the flower. “They do, don’t they?”

“What has happened here?” I said pointedly.

“My stepmother, it seems,” Wendell said. “She has come here, to the dooryard of my court, and placed a curse upon this grove. More specifically than that, I cannot say.”

“It is like the others,” the scout said, looking disgusted.

“We burned the others,” one of the guards said. “This—whatever this place has become — will not ignite on its own, but if we set the neighbouring trees ablaze, and drive the flames towards this grove, it will eventually catch.”

He raised his sword and hacked at the sticky mist. His sword sank deep and then stuck there; he had to wrench it free with a wet smacking sound.

“Don’t,” Wendell said, putting his hand out. Stabbing at the substance had produced a strange reaction; it shuddered and twitched like a wounded beast. It was then that I realized what was niggling at my senses. It was not anything in particular, but rather an absence. I should have been able to hear the minute rustlings and footfalls of brownies and other common fae, watching us from the green forest shadow, indistinguishable from nature’s ordinary soundscape to most mortals, but not to me.

Panic rose within me, as well as horror, but it would be a lie to say these were not alloyed with excitement. I pulled out my notebook and began a quick sketch.

Lord Taran gave a huff of laughter. “What a peculiar little thing you are.”

Wendell, meanwhile, was pacing back and forth, examining the grove with increasing distress. “It is a ruin,” he said. “The trees—the flowers. Every burrow and den. I can’t—”

He lifted his hand and made a sweeping gesture. Something passed over the grove—a ripple of light, smelling of summer and tasting of rain, impossible and wondrous, a cleansing sensation. And then it was gone, and the grove was unchanged.

I rocked back slightly. A part of me wanted to ask him to do that—whatever he had done—again. It was the childish part that was half afraid and half delighted whenever he performed some feat of magic I hadn’t known he was capable of.

He did not repeat the enchantment, though, merely gave a curse and ran a hand through his hair. “Wendell,” I said suddenly, gripping his arm.

Two brownies sat in one of the cursed trees, watching us. At least, I think they were watching us. They too were wrapped in tendrils of the uncanny mist, which seemed to be animating them somehow, like puppets, for it was evident that they were dead; their eyes stared but did not see, and their bodies had a slight translucence. Together, they turned and faded back into the corrupted forest.

“Gather up the deadfall and start the fire,” Lord Taran ordered the guards. “Actually—”

He flicked his hand at a cluster of ferns, and they burst into flame—it was smoky and malcontent, because of the damp, but it burnt brightly. The mist stirred, and then it detached a thick tendril and smothered the fire with a gentle burbling sound.

We all fell back a step.

“It did that before,” the scout said. His face was so pale the scar looked livid, almost fresh. “We must light it away from the margin—once the flames pass a certain size, the corruption cannot defeat them. Come.”

He and two of our guards disappeared into the trees. I turned to where Deilah stood with a guard on either side of her, thinking that I would order them to take her back to our mounts. But Deilah was no longer there. Instead, I found one guard blinking at the space where she had been and the second pinned to the ground beneath a deara, which was both like and unlike the creature Ariadne and I had met: the faerie had roughly the same shape, something halfway between a man and a toad, but it too was dreadfully scabbed, and its body seemed more mist than substance. Yet this had no effect on its ability to do violence. Indeed, the guard was no longer moving—the creature had opened her throat with its teeth.

It had happened so fast that I did not even have the wherewithal to shout, but Wendell did not hesitate. He lunged after Deilah, who was being dragged into the forest by two other corrupted deara. I could not follow exactly what he did, for he moved far too fast, but I saw the aftermath well enough: two heads went tumbling past me. He shoved his sister back, for another deara had lunged at him out of the mist, and she tripped and rolled down the hillside after the heads.

Lord Taran, meanwhile, was driving his sword into a creature I did not immediately recognize, which looked like a deer gone scabby and ethereal, like the others. The mist, meanwhile, was roiling like water in a heated pot.

I ran to Deilah’s side and helped her to her feet—the girl was gasping and clutching at her throat, which was developing a nasty bruise from the deara’s grip—and then Lord Wherry was there, dragging the both of us down the hill.

“Wendell—” I cried, still half stupefied. I kept thinking, Too fast. This has come apart too fast.

“The king can take care of himself, you silly creature,” Lord Wherry said. “We must get you two back to the horses.”

But we had travelled only a few paces before Lord Taran caught up with us. I thought for a moment that he’d joined us in fleeing the scene, but then, to my astonishment, he dealt Lord Wherry a backhanded blow that sent the man sprawling.

“What are you doing?” I cried. “He’s helping us. There’s no need—”

“Oh, but there is,” Taran drawled. “I have a great curiosity to see how this phenomenon affects the nobility. Councillors are easily replaced, my queen.”

Lord Wherry shrieked and tried to flee. Taran gestured, and a gust of wind knocked Lord Wherry off his feet.

“We can’t have that, my lord,” he said, and then, in a motion as casual as the one he’d used to crush the insects, he lifted his boot and stamped on Lord Wherry’s leg. A sickening crack resounded through the grove.

Deilah screamed—I pulled her to me and pressed her face into my neck. Just in time, too: though there seemed to be no need for it, for Lord Wherry lay still on the forest floor, moaning, Taran lifted his boot again and broke his other leg.

I choked down my own scream, bile rising in my throat. Lord Taran seized the blubbering Lord Wherry by the collar of his cloak and dragged him easily through the trees, and then he tossed him into the rippling dark.

Lord Wherry’s cries were abruptly silenced.

I felt as if I were rooted to the forest floor, staring dumbly at the place where Lord Wherry had vanished. The breeze smelled of smoke, and through the trees came a bright flickering. The guards had started a fire, but how long would it take to reduce this cursed place to ash? Wendell finished dispatching the deara, as well as several corrupted brownies, and left the remaining guards to handle the other spectral figures who rose up out of the mist.

“We’ve seen enough,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over Deilah’s sobs.

I nodded, because even through it all—the horror of the grove, the greater horror of Lord Taran’s brutality, Deilah’s blubbering—I found a theory surfacing in my mind, like a single bright fish rising through troubled waters.

“I think—” I began, but what I had been about to say next twisted into a shriek.

Lord Wherry had risen from the dark. He too was draped in mist now, his eyes unseeing. I could not make sense of it. Only moments ago he had been a living, breathing person, one whom I had been speaking with; now it was as if the vitality and substance, the very personhood had been drained from him, leaving behind only the outline of what once had been, like a shed snakeskin.

Wendell turned quickly enough to meet Lord Wherry’s sword—I use that word only loosely; it had the translucence of ice. That was the most terrifying thing about these wraiths—my rational mind kept telling me that they should not have been able to touch us; the mist seemed to transform them into itself as it claimed them. They should have been like the monsters under a child’s bed, a presence that could frighten but not harm.

Wendell parried and thrust his sword into Lord Wherry’s chest, and the man collapsed back into the mist.

“My curiosity has been sated,” Lord Taran said grimly. “Our kind is not immune to the corrupting influence of this grove. As I would prefer not to become an unthinking puppet in my dear sister’s revenge plot, I suggest we depart.”

It was as he spoke the last word that I heard a whoosh of air, and felt something solid strike me. Solid—and slightly bony. I rolled down the slope, having little idea what was happening. It was only when I came to a crashing halt against a tree trunk that I understood: Deilah had leapt upon me, sending the both of us tumbling down the hill, and sparing me from probable decapitation, for the whoosh had come from a sword.

I felt something warm slip down my forehead, and pressed my hand to it. I stared at the bright red staining my palm—the sword had cut my scalp.

“Emily!” Wendell shouted, horror sharpening his voice. He had locked swords with the person who had tried to maim me, and sent her reeling back. It was the guard who had been killed by the deara—the corruption had claimed her as she lay forgotten where she had fallen.

“I’m fine,” I called, trying to reassure him before I was even certain it was true. Fortunately, as I took stock of myself, I found I was right—the cut was shallow, though it was bleeding a great deal.

“Here.” Hiccupping a little, Deilah pressed a silk handkerchief to my head.

“Thank you,” I said.

Her lip trembled. “I want to go home,” she said. Then she burst into tears.

“Shh,” I said, patting her back. Guilt pricked at me; I had been the one to bring her here. And yet her mother was the cause of this. Shouldn’t she witness it? Hadn’t that been my intention?

I gave up arguing with myself and simply huddled there with Deilah as Wendell fought. The guard seemed to possess some skill with a sword—or perhaps it was the curse that lent her strength—for she managed to deliver a shallow slash across Wendell’s side. Only the one, though, for in the next instant, Wendell knocked the wraith’s weapon aside and drove his sword into her chest. Then he drove it in again. And again.

“Wendell!” I shouted, but he seemed not to hear me. Eventually, Lord Taran, who had been distracted by another wraith, simply kicked the thoroughly dead guard out of Wendell’s reach.

The earth shuddered.

I had been in the process of picking myself up, because it was abundantly clear that, as poor Lord Wherry had noted, there was no need for Deilah or me to be there, getting in the way, but the tremor threw me to my knees. A new spectre had risen from the mist, towering over the others. It was a drayfox—which, I have since learned, can grow as large as cottages in their old age. The mist swirled about it and through it, only half obscuring the scabs poking through its spectral fur. It was then that my mind cleared.

The scabs were like those on the tree fauns’ horns.

My thoughts took off at a gallop. I remembered what Callum had said about Queen Arna—that she had taken the poison within herself and somehow infected the realm with it, as a mortal might pass on a cold. It was a mad idea, of course, and yet simultaneously—as is often the case in Faerie—there was a sort of logic to it. Monarchs of Faerie do not merely inhabit their realms; they are thought to be intricately entwined. [*] It was both a threat to Wendell’s rule and the perfect revenge against him. He who had evaded the same poison was now forced to watch it consume his realm.

The theories kept churning. The poison that had sickened this grove had come from the tree fauns. Had the common fae possessed by it also been possessed by the fauns’ malice?

Wendell crouched at the edge of the darkness, leaning on one hand; the other he pressed against his side, blood dripping through his fingers. When he looked up, I saw that he was lost. His expression was devoid of anything other than the all-consuming fury I had witnessed only a handful of times, and had rather hoped I would not see again.

“Brother, do not touch it,” Deilah cried through her tears. She ran towards him, and I seized her arm and dragged her down the hill, or tried to—she fought me, her elbow connecting with my stomach, and the breath left me in a wheeze.

Wendell, still possessed by his mindless fury, marched into the swirling mist as if we had not just watched it possess everything that it touched. Horrified, I screamed at him to turn back, which produced absolutely no effect. But the mist did not rise to cover him as it had Lord Wherry; it shrank back. It closed behind him, but not in the places where his blood fell upon the earth. There the grasses and underbrush of the forest grew lush and green, shaking off the curse.

This I noted.

The curse did not seem to appreciate Wendell’s determination. Dozens of wraiths rose out of the darkness—it sickened me, the sight of so many small Folk destroyed by this dark magic, even as I quaked in terror of them.

Lord Taran had no such conflicted feelings, and even seemed to be enjoying himself. His sword flashed as he hewed and stabbed, often moving so fast that he was little more than a dark wind to my eyes. I clutched Deilah to me—to comfort the child, who was still crying, though I suspect it was as much to comfort myself.

Wendell, meanwhile, had neither slowed nor slackened his pace, no matter how many monsters the mist threw at him. Two of the guardians swooped in to help him—not Razkarden; no doubt he was too wise—and he killed them without pause, or any sign of recognition.

When he reached the spectral drayfox, which had only grown in size, he drew back his sword and hurled it in a glittering arc. It plunged into the spectre’s eye, and a gust of wind enveloped the grove, the ground trembling beneath our feet. The spectre sagged backwards, and then it collapsed.

Wendell had caught his sword, or summoned it somehow, and was now hacking at the mist itself, there being no more wraiths to challenge him. Eventually, Lord Taran, stepping gingerly through the mist, which was beginning to dissolve, met Wendell’s sword with his own, disarming him with a series of impossible strikes. At that, the fury seemed to leave Wendell like an exhaled breath, and he gave Lord Taran a puzzled look, as if there had been nothing at all strange about his murderous rampage, nor any reason for him to stop.

The disintegrating mist expanded towards Deilah and me, and the girl tore herself out of my grasp and ran pell-mell into the forest, shrieking. Wendell swore and took off after her, vanishing into one tree and then stepping out of another, where he caught his sister and hauled her back towards our mounts. She seemed torn between beating her fists against his chest and sobbing into his neck, which slowed their progress somewhat. The grove was brightening, and I coughed on the smoke clogging the air. One of the guards came hurrying towards Lord Taran, soot smeared across her cheek.

“We’ve surrounded the grove with pyres, my lord,” she said. “These trees will soon be up in flames.”

Lord Taran sheathed his sword and came towards me, which sent me scuttling backwards on my hands in instinctive terror before I forced myself to stop. He helped me to my feet, catching me with unexpected gentleness as my legs wobbled. And then I was dragged away.

Skip Notes

* Wentworth Morrison’s Folk-Lore of Scotland, Volume III: Thrones of Faerie (1852) remains the definitive resource on this topic, but Farris Rose’s exhaustive investigation of Cornish faerie stories (in particular his Atlas of Tales, 1900) provides additional insight. Cornwall holds the record for the sheer number of interactions between mortals and monarchs of Faerie (Rose’s “Comparative Analysis of the Faerie Markets of Bodmin Moor,” published in Dryadological Fieldnotes in 1902, offers several intriguing theories as to why this might be so). In many of the tales recorded by Morrison and Rose, a faerie monarch’s power is also their Achilles’ heel: while they control the landscape and weather, they can be defeated by being trapped and removed from their homes, as a flower dies when uprooted from its soil.