EIGHTEEN
Angharad
The grasses bloomed verdant green and rippled on the steep hillsides, and flowers buzzed with insects as Hara and Gideon made their way up the mountain. The swollen streams burbled musically, and even the snowy white peaks in the distance seemed warm.
Hara began to notice strange things along the riverbank they followed.
Animals seemed to be completely fearless at their approach, with stoats, birds, and deer not giving so much as a flinch as they passed. Hara thought that if she went to a deer and began to pat it, the creature would barely notice or care. There were other things, too, like wild plants Hara would not expect in the high reaches of the mountains. Thickly clustered gardenias, orchids, and all manner of delicate and fussy plants that would only thrive in a hothouse were abundant.
“This stream must be runoff from the glacier, feeding into the Morais,”
said Gideon as they passed another herd of deer that did not move a muscle at their approach.
“I half expect to see a unicorn on our journey up the mountain.”
“Do you really think the sorbite is infusing the water with magic?”
asked Hara.
“I spoke to an expert on minerals, and he seemed to think it was possible,”
said Gideon.
“Think about it. There are an untold number of magical people trapped inside of the stone, and if it is absorbing their magic, then that means anything that comes into contact with it will become enchanted.”
Hara shuddered. Every time she thought of the many people over the years who had disappeared within the stone, she felt a sickening coldness descend upon her.
Soon the waving grasses gave way to stony ground, and drifts of half-melted snow began to appear between the trees.
There was a faint sound to the right, and Gideon suddenly stuck out his arm to prevent Hara from taking another step.
The cracking of twigs grew louder, and Hara’s heart began to pound as she gripped the handles of her knives.
A gigantic brown bear lumbered through the trees and crossed their path.
It was so close that Hara could smell its earthy musk and could probably reach out to touch it if she tried.
It stopped to look at them curiously for a moment, then continued on its way.
Two small cubs tumbled in its wake. Hara’s spine felt as though ants were crawling along it, but she dared not move a muscle to startle the she-bear.
They stopped at a raspberry bush nearby and began to nose through the leaves, slurping fat, shiny berries into their mouths.
The berries looked like large rubies, tempting and juicy.
“Do you think the berries are safe to eat?”
Gideon said in a low voice, not wishing to disturb the mother bear.
“I don’t know,”
said Hara.
“They could be enchanted with Planter’s magic, or they could be cursed. Best not to eat anything we find on the mountain.”
With bated breath, they inched along slowly and continued on their way. The bears did not spare them a backwards glance.
Once they were out of sight of the mother and her cubs, Hara felt that she could breathe properly again.
“Good thing I brought provisions,”
said Gideon, digging rolls and apples out of his pack. He passed them to Hara, glancing over his shoulder every few steps.
“What is your plan when we find this place?”
asked Gideon.
“I don’t know,”
said Hara slowly.
It had bothered her ever since she saw Corvus’ memory.
There was a reason no witches escaped this prison.
There had been no guards around the glacier in the memory. He would never leave such a place unguarded and unfettered with walls or chains if he had any doubt that prisoners could escape.
That fact was what scared Hara most of all.
She was frightened by what she would find if she stepped through the stone.
And once she did, then what? She would try to find a way to escape with her mother, but what about the rest of them?
“I don’t know what I can do other than go inside myself.”
“Could you try to transform it into a metal?”
asked Gideon.
“I don’t think so. I cannot grasp it; it’s empty space to me. And it would be difficult to get down into the pit without falling. Besides, I don’t know what that would do to the people who are trapped inside.”
“Perhaps they would all be expelled from it unharmed,”
said Gideon with half-hearted hope.
“They could. Or they could be crushed instantly, pulled apart, frozen inside, or transformed into metal themselves. It’s impossible to know. I doubt there are any books on the subject.”
The riverbank they were following began to slope sharply on their left so that their footing became more and more precarious. Eventually, it was so steep that they were forced to find a place to cross. The recent rain made the water roar and churn dangerously, and any debris they could have used as a bridge had been washed away.
“I don’t think it’s very deep,”
said Hara.
“No, but it’s the speed that worries me,”
said Gideon.
“Let’s go back farther downstream and see if there’s a safer way.”
They both knew that the entire length of river they had passed on the way up was just as swollen and treacherous, but they doubled back anyway.
Finally, they found a sapling that had been caught by some rocks and formed a weak dam.
It was not ideal, but as there were no other fallen trees nearby to fortify it, it would have to do.
Gideon went first, and then Hara carefully followed.
He turned to catch her hands when she slipped once, and she gripped onto him.
They hobbled like this for the latter half of the crossing.
The sapling did not reach the bank, and there was a deep, swirling pool between them and dry land.
Gideon took a breath, and then he made a great leap, landing on the slippery mud and scrabbling up the side.
“You can do it, I’ll catch you,”
he said, turning back to her and holding out his arms.
The eddy was brown and white with froth, surging through the channel.
Hara tossed Seraphine first, and the cat landed safely on land.
Then she steeled herself and jumped as hard as she could.
The water was heavy on her feet, and with horror, she realized she had not judged the distance correctly.
Her foot slipped, and she scrabbled with her fingernails to find purchase, but within a moment, the water caught at her feet and the current quickly swept her downstream.
She heard shouts over the roar of the rapids, and then she saw something sleek and dark cutting through the water.
She was about to scream when her head went under and a burst of pain shattered on the side of her face.
She swept past the underwater boulder, and her scream died in her throat.
The sharp tang of herbs met her senses, and Hara blearily opened her eyes.
Someone held a posset under her nose, and she blinked to bring them into focus.
The woman was so small that at first Hara thought she was a child.
Her ears rose in graceful points, and her skin was a pearlescent blue-gray, so thin it seemed almost translucent.
“She will have a tender head for a while, but she will live,”
said the tiny woman to someone out of Hara’s eyeline.
Hara glanced around from her position on her back.
Pots, lanterns, and bundles of herbs hung from every inch of the earthen ceiling, and the sight of such familiar, homey goods made her breathing ease.
Slowly, she sat up, putting a hand to the scrape on the side of her face, and found that she wore a short linen shift.
She had vague memories of what happened after she hit her head, of her mouth filling with water and hands dragging her ashore.
She must have slipped in and out of consciousness while they dressed her.
Gideon knelt at her side, his relief palpable.
The woman tended a small smokey fire where Hara’s clothing was hanging up to dry, and a man, another creature of her kind, sat at a small table.
Seraphine was settled in the man’s lap, purring deeply.
Then Hara’s eyes fell on the last person in the room. He was sitting right behind her, and she gave a start.
“You,”
she said to Seith, her head throbbing at her sudden movement.
“What are you doing here?”
“He saved your life. Pulled you to shore,”
said the fae man.
“We saw what happened, and so we offered to bring you here to our home.”
“Thank you,”
said Hara, stifling her anger. She did not want to create a scene in front of the people who had offered them the sanctuary of their home and tended her injuries. She turned back to look at their hosts.
“What are your names?”
The fae man and woman glanced at each other.
“Do you come from the Montag court?”
“Yes,”
said Hara and Gideon together.
“Then we would rather not say. We have no friends there.”
“We are not allies of the Montag court,”
said Hara.
“I am looking for my mother, who Corvus imprisoned when I was a child. Thanks to him,”
she added bitterly, glaring at Seith.
“She was a Seer, and so am I.”
“A Seer,”
said the woman with some interest, her mouth pulled down at the corners. Hara could understand her concern; if she wanted to, Hara could learn every detail of their lives.
“I would never look into your past if you did not wish for it,”
said Hara.
The woman relaxed slightly.
“We do not believe in revealing our names carelessly, and we will not ask for yours.”
Hara nodded, unsure if they guarded their names because they were in hiding or simply because they were fae.
“You are going to the Maw,”
said the woman, standing up straight. She was no taller than Hara’s waist. At Hara’s confused expression, the woman added, “The pit.”
“Yes,”
said Hara. She wondered how much Gideon had told them about their purpose. Seith obviously had not spoken much, since his nose looked unbroken.
“That is a cursed place,”
said the woman.
“I know that it is being used as a prison,”
said Hara.
“It is not meant to be a prison. It is not meant to be seen or touched by mortal hands,”
said the woman.
“It is our peoples’ most sacred place, to be feared and respected. Now it has been corrupted and turned into a parasite.”
“A parasite?”
asked Gideon.
The woman turned large gray eyes to him.
“It is a leech, sucking magic from its prisoners. My people used it to dispose of our dead so their memories could live on forever, kept in the stone and in the very water. But to trap live beings inside it is monstrous.”
“Corvus and my father could not have come up with this idea on their own. Neither of them is knowledgeable about obscure scrying stones. Someone showed them how it could be used,”
said Gideon, and he turned steely eyes to Seith.
“It was you.”
But Seith was shaking his head.
“No. Everyone at the royal court knew that sorbite was used by the wild mountain fae, but they thought it was a low form of magic. My family—”
Seith paused, as though the words were difficult to form.
“They did not find physical aids . . . elegant.”
“It was my sister and her supporters who showed them how it could be done,”
said the woman.
“Corvus and his men came to our court and promised protection and fair treatment under their new reign. Our people were never treated well by the Ilmarinens, and these non-magical folk seemed different. But I did not trust them.”
“She spoke out against Corvus and his plans to use the stone to imprison witches,”
said the man.
Hara remembered the word the fae used for their queens: rexina. She recalled in her book of royalty that the sitting fae ruler was Rexina Armot. Could this woman be fae royalty? The text did not mention her name.
“You were banished?”
said Hara, looking from the woman to the man.
“We have lived away from our people for many years. But we have watched the city below transform into something it was never meant to be. And our people still do not have a place at the new court. They were only tools.”
“Will we meet with any trouble from them if we go to the glacier?”
asked Gideon.
“Do they post sentries to guard it?”
The woman turned her unsettling eyes slowly to Gideon, as though he had asked an odd question.
“The stone needs no guardian. Any who attempt to go near it perish or are trapped for all time.”
“That is not true,”
said Hara, remembering the brief glimpses she had seen of Turnswallow plummeting into an icy hole in her visions. After seeing the hole in Corvus’ memory, she now knew what it was.
“A sorcerer named Turnswallow found a way out. He fell in and somehow escaped.”
The fae woman’s eyes flickered to the man’s for the briefest moment, but Hara caught it.
“What is it? What do you know?”
“There is a saying we have in fae when it comes to reversing enchantments: ‘retrace and do the hard thing,’”
said the man.
“Turnswallow spent some time among us, learning our ways. He may have found a way to escape by using this idea.”
“But what does it mean?”
asked Gideon.
“It is not always clear until you are under the enchantment. But each journey follows a path of events. You must return and complete a loop. A circle, if you will.”
“There is magic in cycles,”
said Gideon, and Hara could not suppress the upward turn of her lips. The fae woman nodded.
“You must go back the way you came. But why are you asking about this? Surely you do not mean to enter the Maw and live to tell about it?”
“I am,”
said Hara.
“I wish to find my mother and free her.”
“I do not want to give you false hope. It may not work,”
said the woman.
“But it often does,”
said the man.
“The stone is not of fae design, but all magic tends to favor certain patterns.”
“Do not take a fae trick and believe it to be true, Angharad,”
Seith’s voice suddenly rang out.
“They do not study or make record of magic as we do. They have no training or history to turn to, only superstition. There must be another way, and if Turnswallow could decipher it, then we can as well.”
Irritation burned in Hara. The fae had revered the stone for an age, and he had the audacity to disparage their wisdom? If Seith wanted her to delay and puzzle it out, he could wish until he turned blue.
“I’ll trust the word of the fae a thousand times before I would trust a murderer and a traitor,”
she said coldly.
Seith’s shoulders slumped, cowed by her tone. The woman and the man seemed startled by her words, but they did not seem upset. On the contrary, the woman’s lips were parted in awe. Perhaps it was the first time they had ever heard a witch take their side in anything.
“Is there anything else you could tell me about the Maw?”
she asked the woman.
“Only fae lore, but I do not think that would help your cause. We are not natural Seers, and so the stone may work differently for us than it would for you,”
said the woman.
“I cannot tell you what will be waiting for you down there. But I wish you luck in abundance.”
By the time Hara’s clothing was dry, it was late afternoon. They departed the small underground burrow on the riverbank where the fae couple had made their home, and Hara glanced back. Seraphine was perched on the fae man’s shoulder, watching her leave with large eyes. Hara did not know when they would return, and she wanted to make sure her familiar was well cared for. If we return, the unpleasant thought whispered in the back of her mind.
Seith had insisted that he accompany them, but Hara refused. She did not care if he saved her life in the river. In her eyes, nothing could redeem him, and it did not take long for Gideon to catch on.
“I know things about magic that neither of you do,”
Seith said earnestly.
“I was educated by the great sorcerer Yasbar and the strategist Helsin.”
“I would have been, too, if you hadn’t stolen my life and my childhood,”
spat Hara, turning to leave.
“We don’t need you.”
“Why haven’t you tried to enter the stone yourself in all this time?”
asked Gideon.
“Why wait until now to try and free Desideria?”
Hara paused in her livid stomping and turned to see what Seith would say.
“I thought . . . I thought she might be angry with me,”
said Seith, avoiding their eyes.
“I couldn’t face her.”
“Your cowardice makes me retch,”
said Hara, turning her back on him again.
“But think about it, Angharad. If you and I freed her, perhaps—perhaps we could free the others as well.”
“Why do you care?”
asked Gideon.
“What if we could . . . ”
Seith looked between them, and a fierce gleam had entered his bloodshot eyes. He knew he had their attention.
“What if they could help us take it back? The throne?”
There it was. This was the true motivation behind his desperate desire to help her. He wanted the throne he had been promised. After all this time, that greed was still there. The thing he would throw his family, his lover, and his child away for. For the first time, Hara looked upon his rangy form and threadbare robes with the barest touch of pity. The thirst for power had eaten at his flesh and picked clean his bones. It was all he had left.
Hara unsheathed one of the short bone daggers at her hip and held it to her sternum. Gideon started toward her in alarm. She glared unblinking into Seith’s eyes.
“I would sooner sink this knife into my chest than help you become king.”
But Seith did not look worried. Instead, there was a knowing look in the way his mouth curled.
“They found out, didn’t they? About your alchemy. You are the last in the Ilmarinen line, and your elemental power is rarer than any in recent memory. But they wanted to use you for gold. To keep you enslaved.”
He stepped forward.
“They cannot win, Angharad. Your mother and I are the rightful rulers, and you are my heir. You are braver and more just than I. You can make all the changes you could dream of, reverse all the wrongs that Corvus has done. I think this is what was meant to be.”
For a moment, Hara allowed herself to imagine it. Her mother restored and respected, and Hara able to return to the palace to put an end to the cruelty and the greed that had overrun the realm. She could close the mines and give the fae a place at court. She could shut down the armament factories and watch the war in the south dwindle and dry up. She could—
“We cannot know what was meant to be. Not without her,”
said Hara, and she lowered her knife.
“Now, I am going to begin reversing your wrongs.”
Gideon
Gideon walked silently by Hara’s side as they trudged uphill. Seith had tried to protest, but it was only when Gideon turned the bone knife on him that he transformed into his animal shape and dove into the stream. He was a coward to the last.
After a time, Hara’s soft voice broke the silence.
“You took out your jewelry.”
He touched his ear reflexively.
“The fae are even more sensitive than witches. I did not want to cause them discomfort, so I buried my jewelry and my weapons away from their home.”
There was a pause as Hara considered this.
“Did you not wish to retrieve them?”
The thought had crossed his mind; he felt naked going into the Maw unarmed. But mixing metals with magic was risky, and secretly, he feared that mere blades or hand pistols would not be of much help in the spirit world. Besides, Hara still carried her bone knives.
“I was thinking about what you said. I don’t want to risk harming your mother or the others trapped inside,” he said.
Hara gave a quick nod, her mouth firm, and he wondered if she carried the same fears he did.
When they reached the top of the rise, the landscape changed. Gone were the spruce trees and scrubby bushes.
The river they had been following fractured into several smaller rivulets that braided across the plain. The ground was a pattern of tan and black curves where water had flowed and dried a million times. They stood before a wide and empty expanse of sand, rock, and boulders of ice, surrounded by snowy peaks on all sides. Desolate and barren compared to the lushness further down the mountain, but the starkness had its own beauty.
Ahead was a giant wall of white, hulking and foreboding.
“There is the glacier,”
said Gideon.
Hara glanced at the sky. The evening sun was on their left.
“We need to go this way,”
she said, pointing to it.
“In my vision, the sun was setting, and it was directly in front of them.”
Gideon gestured for her to lead the way, and she began to guide them towards a rocky outcropping to the left.
As they neared the glacier, Gideon began to hear tiny hisses and cracklings in the ice.
A deep crack made chills run up his spine; it felt as though a giant beast was about to burst forth out of the ice at any moment.
By the time they rounded the jutting rock, the sun was setting before them, and to the right was a river of gargantuan ice boulders and deep crevasses.
And there it was: a massive circular hole atop the glacier, a void.
The ice surrounding it was dark and gritty, and it made the interior almost black.
Water slipped over the edge and trickled down inside, forming deep vertical grooves that were swallowed up by the dark.
The bitter wind whipped at Gideon’s face, and he turned to Hara.
She looked haunted, like she had seen this all before in a dream.
It would not do to show her his fear.
He took her hand, and when she turned her eyes to him, he gave her a firm nod.
She returned it, and then they began to make their way to the edge of the glacier together, slipping on the precarious footing and holding on to each other for support.
They climbed the gritty ice slowly, making their way to the flattened top where the hole yawned.
When they reached the mouth of the pit, they hesitated.
It was treacherous here, and any false step could send them slipping and plummeting over the edge.
An odd roaring came from the depths within, and it made Gideon’s hairs stand up.
“Do you hear that?”
Hara breathed.
“Or is it the stone?”
“I hear it,”
Gideon whispered.
“Can you see anything?”
She peered down into the blackness, and through the trickling water, she must have seen something he could not.
“Yes. It’s there.”
Neither of them moved, staring silently into the depths.
“Hara, this is suicide,”
said Gideon.
“You can’t tell me you are going to jump in there.”
“What did you think we were doing? Coming for a look?”
she asked.
“I didn’t realize it was so . . . deep,”
he said, swallowing against his dry throat. Gideon had never been sensitive to heights, but the unsettling, roaring echo coming up from the blackness was telling all of his instincts to turn around and go back down the mountain.
“If there is magic flowing from the water in the cave, then that means they survived the fall,”
said Hara.
“If they survived, so can I.”
“But it’s madness! The fae trick might not work, and you would be trapped along with them!”
“At least I would be with her,”
said Hara, her voice rough with tears.
“I could see her again.”
“Hara . . .”
Gideon said, helpless and terrified. Then his brows furrowed, and he took her hand.
“I’ll jump with you.”
Hara turned, shocked eyes to him.
“We don’t know what will happen, Gideon. The stone might not open for you, and you would be dashed to death.”
“I won’t let you go alone,”
he said firmly.
“And besides, I’ve sinned more in my life than I’m proud of. It might not be such a bad thing if I leave the earth attempting to help you find her.”
“You are a complete fool,”
she said.
“There is every chance this won’t work.”
“It might,”
he said.
“Maybe my non-magic essence will allow you to find your way back out again. Anything is possible.”
Hara sighed, biting her lip.
“Ready?”
said Gideon.
“No,”
said Hara, tensing.
“Neither am I,”
he said, crouching his knees.
They leapt.