Chapter Twenty-Four
Ina woke with a gasp to the sound of someone pounding at her door hard enough to shake the latch.
“Ina!”
Karai.
Karai, panicked and shouting.
She was out of bed before she was fully awake. The room was still dark with the last depth of night, and she had only enough mind left for fear before she was at the door and pulling it open.
Karai stood there, breathless, hair disordered, one hand still half raised to strike the wood again.
“She’s gone,” he gasped, voice close to breaking. “Nearly killed Velor. We got to him just in time. But she’s gone.”
Ina swore.
That woke her the rest of the way.
She dressed at speed, hands and wind clumsy to get a shirt and pants on her fast enough, and met Karai in the corridor already turning toward the library. By the time they reached it, the others were there.
Derran stood near the long table with water still shining in his hair from some hasty wash or rain or both.
Lugo and Jasenka had come in half dressed by royal standards, which meant the news had reached them quickly enough to strip them of ceremony.
Eogan looked as if he had been awake for hours already and had spent those hours expecting exactly this sort of catastrophe.
He opened his mouth the moment Ina entered. “I told you so. I told you all.”
“Shh,” Ina said. It came out sharper than she meant, but it had the desired effect. Eogan chose, with visible and audible irritation, not to continue speaking.
Ina went to the table and put both hands on it.
“Now is not the time,” she said. “You all need to go back to your courts. Warn them again. Every guard, every servant, every creature with eyes and enough sense to report what it sees. She does not have the necklace now, and she knows I found her once through the animals. I’ll try that again,
but we may not be so lucky this time.”
No one argued.
Lugo nodded first. Jasenka after him. Eogan only once, curtly. Derran looked as though he wanted to say ten different things and had decided all of them were useless beside speed. They broke apart hastily, each already turning toward the next duty.
Derran lingered one heartbeat longer than the others. He came close enough to touch his lips to Ina’s forehead, brief and quiet.
“Be careful,” he whispered.
“I will be,” she said.
He gave her one look that suggested he doubted the whole arrangement of the world but would accept her answer because there was no time left for better ones. Then he was gone too.
Only Karai remained.
He had not moved from the far side of the table. His eyes were dark with thought, not outwardly panicked now, but too deep in some line of reasoning to come fully back into the room.
“Karai.”
He looked up.
“Why would she have sent the pigeon fairy to the cavern with the diamonds? If she had the necklace the whole time, what would have been the point?”
“A distraction,” he said.
She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. There’s something in there. I have to go and find out what it is.”
He straightened. “You are not going alone.”
“You have to stay here and protect the burrow court. And… if she comes for you, you’ll be safer here too.”
“You can’t fight the snakes on your own,” he protested. “And we don’t know what other creatures are in there.”
“I can.” Then, because that was too broad and he would attack the broadness rather than the truth, she added, “And I only need to get to the stone head.”
He paused at that, staring at her, so determined and reckless before him.
A flicker of a memory came to him, of how once she had told him that she would not be stopped in coming to the burrow court, despite the danger she had then believed lay before her.
An understanding came to him then about her stubbornness.
About the power her sheer will held. And another understanding came almost on top of the first – the plan.
Her plan. Reluctantly, he admitted to himself that it made sense.
He spoke in that soft tone of his, the one that had always held correction without judgment. “What if the riddles are difficult?”
That made her smile despite the hour. “Then I’ll get angry.”
To her relief, he smiled too. It was small, but it softened him back into the man she knew rather than the distraught prince standing over another failure with blood still fresh in his mind.
She crossed to him, kissed him once deeply on the lips, and left before either of them could say something to slow her down.
She stopped only long enough to snatch up the velvet bag of weapons they had brought back from the cavern the first time.
It still held the small metal fire charges, the wind-discs, and the rest of the ugly little fairy tools she hoped not to need but would not now go without. She did not bother with the armor.
Then she flew.
The journey took a long time again, more frustrating now that she knew how long, and how little time it felt like they had.
Yet, the kingdom had not grown smaller merely because she was in a hurry.
Forests and rivers passed beneath her. The land rose, widened, turned stonier under the afternoon sun.
She did not stop to rest. Barely stopped to breathe.
She pushed on, flying as fast as her wings would let her, until the mountain range rose before her again, until the air thinned and the same cold took hold of her skin.
By the time she reached the ledge, the sunrise had turned to full daylight.
The door to the cavern was sealed again. The carved symbols sat dark in the mountain wall, the stone face of the ledge unchanged, giving no hint that an opening had ever been there. Ina landed and went straight to it, setting her palm where she had seen Karai set his.
“Come on,” she muttered, not entirely sure whether she was speaking to the magic or to herself.
She poured light into the symbol.
For one uncertain moment nothing happened.
Then the first mark glowed.
The rest followed, one by one around the circle, filling with pale gold until the whole doorway burned with it. The mountain opened again, darkness replacing stone.
Ina did not step through. Not yet. Instead she closed her eyes and reached down with her mind, to the things below the bridge.
She found them easily.
Or it. She could not tell whether the minds she brushed were many or one. There was hissing layered on hissing, hunger upon hunger, old and cold and coiled in the dark.
Aloud, very quietly, she said, “Let me pass.”
In her mind, the answer came first as sound. Hiss upon hiss upon hiss, so many together that for a moment she thought she had failed entirely to reach anything with the words to respond.
Then one single voice slid through the rest. Why should we let you passssss?
Ina opened her eyes, staring into the darkness beyond the threshold.
“I only seek to speak with the stone head,” she said. “Not to go deeper into your cavern. Not to take what you protect.”
More hissing. This time less unified. The noise of many bodies turning over one another, or many thoughts.
Then the voice again. What will you give to ussssss?
That gave her pause.
What did one offer a pit of giant snakes?
She thought of the contents of her bag. Fire. Metal. Tricks. Nothing edible. Nothing useful to them except perhaps herself, and she had no intention of making that offer.
“I have nothing with me now,” she said slowly. “But if you let me pass, I will come back in a few days and bring you what you want. Whatever it is you want. Within reason and my ability, of course.”
The hissing grew instantly louder, and this time she understood enough of it to know disapproval when she heard it.
Then images crowded into her mind so fast she staggered backward.
Small animals. Large ones. Birds. Eggs. A rabbit caught in jaws. A nest. Something warm and soft-bodied. Then, oddly, bread. Then again warmth, not food this time but heat, the glowing pleasure of it against scales and stone. Then more animals. Meat. Bones. Crunching between their fangs.
Ina grimaced.
She did not like the idea of bringing animals to be eaten. The older her bond with creatures grew, the less willing she found herself to become their cheerful supplier of doom.
So she seized on the other little things that had come through.
She sent the feeling of warmth back toward them through the link, as best she could shape it. Sun-warmed rock. A fire near enough to bask in but not burn.
Then she said aloud, “I will not bring you live creatures. That I cannot do. But I will bring you other good food, better than any creature you’ve yet tasted. You will not miss meat at the feast I will provide, I know it. And I can give you warmth now. Not just for a moment. For a long time,
maybe even days.”
The hissing rose again, but different this time. Less refusal. More argument. She had the vivid impression of many heads turning toward one another and not finding agreement quickly.
At last the single voice returned.
Warmth now. And you will return with food within three dayssssss. The final hiss stretched long behind the word “days” until it became almost a threat in itself.
“I agree,” Ina said immediately.
Permission came not in words but in their absence. The hatred and hunger in the cavern drew back just enough to let Ina step through the doorway.
The bridge no longer hung over the black writhing depth, now broken on the ground below from the last battle. The vast darkness ahead of her shifted with living weight. She did not look down more than she had to.
Instead she held her hands out toward the pit and sent fire downward.
Warmth. Broad and steady and bright, spilling heat into the stones and air beneath the bridge without striking flesh, trapping it in the walls of the cavern so that it would dissipate slowly.
The hissing changed again, lower now, almost pleased in the strangest and most reptilian of ways.
No heads rose toward her.
She flew.
Straight across the cavern and into the tunnel on the far side, not wasting one beat of wing more than she had to over that pit. Only when she reached the other tunnel mouth did she let out the breath she had been holding.
Then she went on alone into the mountain.
Ina reached the second opening faster than she had the first time, though not with any less dislike.
The round hole in the tunnel floor waited where it had before, black and abrupt and utterly unwilling to suggest anything pleasant below.
She stood at its edge for one breath, then another, listening to the distant dark and trying not to think too much about water and riddles and the possibility of being drowned by a stone face that enjoyed ceremony.
Then she jumped.
Light came to her hand as she dropped, bright enough to catch the slickness of the air around her and throw a pale glow down into the cavern below. It was exactly as before. The great dark sheet of water. The waiting emptiness. The sense that the whole room had been holding itself still for her.
The ceiling above slammed shut.
The sound cracked through the chamber, and at once the water began to rise.
This time Ina did not startle. Or not much. She hovered in place, wings beating steadily, and watched the surface swell upward until the stone head emerged from it again, ancient and severe and wet with black water.
The voice came through the cavern walls and through her bones.
“Answer me these questions three, or be drowned here in the sea. What may hold both water and air, and an empty hand alike?”
Ina stared.
For a long moment she didn’t think she’d heard correctly. She could not believe it was asking her the same question. Then the water’s quick rise below reminded her that surprise was not a useful answer.
“Another hand,” she said quickly.
The stone head gave no sign it had heard anything unusual in the speed of her answer. It only went on.
“What beats without – ”
“Wings,” Ina interrupted.
This time the head paused. Only for a moment. Long enough that she felt a small, grim pulse of satisfaction. Then it resumed.
“What may – ”
“Love,” she answered firmly.
The water stopped. Then, as before, it drained away again in a swift downward rush, until the full shape of the stone face stood revealed above the receding black surface.
“Answered now the questions three,” it said, “you may ask your question of me.”
Ina had been so intent on thinking of clever answers to complicated riddles and not drowning without having to burst the whole mountain apart, that she had not fully shaped the question in advance.
She hovered there, thinking quickly. Not where is the necklace.
Not who is the mirage fairy. They knew those things now. What mattered was the cavern itself.
At last she said, “Why did Zuri tell the pigeon fairy to bring the diamonds here?”
The stone head was silent for long enough that Ina wondered whether she had asked badly and lost her chance.
Then it answered:
“Nine chambers guard a treasure here.
Sixth and eighth require diamonds clear.
A power greater than a fairy queen’s,
The kingdom’s crown by wishful means.”
Ina stared at it. “What in the world does that mean?”
The stone head did not dignify that with a reply.
It was already sinking, the water climbing around its cheeks, its mouth, its eyes, until the stone face vanished beneath the surface once more. The ceiling above crashed open.
Ina hovered for a moment in the empty chamber, annoyed enough to argue with a rock if it had still been there to argue at.
Then a thought struck her.
Could I ask again?
She flew up through the opening. Then turned and dropped back down.
Nothing happened.
No slamming stone overhead. No rising water. No great head. Only the black water below and the stillness of a room that had already given what it meant to give.
She tried once more, flying back up and then down in a sharper dive, as if insistence alone might rouse the magic.
Still nothing.
With a sigh, she accepted the obvious. There was some limit. One question per person, perhaps. Or per day. Or some stranger rule the stone kept to itself. Whatever it was, she had spent her chance.
So she turned back through the tunnel.
The snakes heard her before she saw them. Their hissing rose from the dark beneath the broken bridge in a layered whisper that had distinctly less menace in it now and distinctly more expectation.
Food, the hiss seemed to say.
Ina paused at the edge of the span and looked down.
“I will be back,” she promised again.
The answering hiss stretched long and satisfied enough that she took it for agreement.
Then she flew across and out through the mountain door, letting the cold evening air strike her face hard enough to clear the last of the cavern from her lungs. She did not stop on the ledge. Did not rest. The riddle still rang in her mind as she turned toward the burrow court and flew.
Nine chambers guard a treasure here. Sixth and eighth require diamonds clear. A power greater than a fairy queen’s. The kingdom’s crown by wishful means.
By the time the mountains began to fall away beneath her, she knew only two things for certain.
The cavern held more than monsters.
And whatever Zuri wanted, it was far greater than simple revenge.