Chapter Thirty-Four
T he face was recognizable—just. The skin, a pleasing creamy brown the last time I’d seen her, was now a sickly off-white, and I didn’t think that was because of Enid’s ball of moonlight. Because Rieni also had what looked like black mold growing up one cheek and into her hairline, eating across the previous perfection like scorching.
Her clothes were also wrong, as tattered as the skeletons’ and barely clinging to her bones, and her hair was singed off on one side as if she’d dodged a spell by millimeters. But it was the eyes that really gave it away. They were as fixed, staring, and lifeless as mine had probably been when fighting Zeus as a bloody corpse.
And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. ?subrand had strode into the room on Bodil’s heels, not bothering with Alphonse’s caution, but his bravado had gone fast. He had been standing there, looking silently around like the rest of us, but now he stumbled back, making some sign in the air.
Had he been an elderly Romanian woman instead of a hunky fey prince, it would have reminded me of the evil eye. Because that was what you did when confronted with a zombie, I thought, only that was impossible! Faerie didn’t have zombies!
But that was definitely what I was seeing here, and Rieni looked like she’d been one for a while. Half of the flesh on one slender arm had rotted away, her eyes were sunken pits that clearly showed the shape of the skull underneath, and her teeth were cracked and partly missing when she suddenly grinned at us, causing her grandmother to make a little sound before going to one knee. But Rieni wasn’t looking at Bodil as I’d have expected.
She was looking at me. And coming toward me with an intent that would have had me backing up, too, except that Alphonse grabbed me and let out a roar of challenge before shoving me behind him alongside Enid. At the same moment, Pritkin moved forward, getting in between the zombie and me, but he didn’t tell me to leave.
Because where was there to go? And before we could discuss it or even form words in our half-stunned brains, the zombie caught herself and stopped, still partway across the room. I guessed our expressions had been eloquent.
She put out a soothing hand, which would have helped more if it hadn’t been connected to the mostly missing arm. I could see the tendons working in the bare spots where all the flesh had rotted away. I could see tendons. . .
“I apologize,” she said, her voice a raspy thread on the air as if the vocal cords making it were dried out and dusty, too. “It’s been so long, I almost thought you weren’t coming. And when you did, it was so sudden that I didn’t have time to choose a different avatar—not that many are left intact.”
“Avatar?” I whispered.
“I am not the girl Rieni,” the thing peering at us through her eyes said. “Her guards fought valiantly for her, dying to give her time to escape. As a result, she was one of the few survivors of the Black Day. She fled but died later when a ceiling collapsed, trapping her underneath.” She glanced down at her ruined arm. “I had to shred this to get her loose after she passed.”
Bodil made another sound, and this one wasn’t the stunned horror of a moment ago. This one was pure rage, and her eyes flooded with flames so bright they stained her face crimson. She jumped at the body of her granddaughter before any of us could react or even register the movement.
But the zombie didn’t have that problem, and Bodil found herself suspended off the ground by some spell halfway through her leap. And, okay, no, I thought, staring. Zombies couldn’t do that.
A fresh zombie, just hours old, might have enough magic left in their veins for one final curse, assuming they’d been a magic worker to begin with. But not one like that. Not with Bodil fighting it, and looking like she was giving it her all, not to mention that whenever Rieni had died, it had been a while ago.
And that meant. . .
I felt my brain skitter away from the implication for a second time.
“You’re not a necromancer,” I said harshly and had those dead eyes look my way again.
“No,” the creature agreed. “Or I wasn’t once. But needs must, isn’t that what you humans say?”
This human found it challenging to say anything but decided I’d better keep her talking. We were outclassed, with our magic almost gone, and even Bodil, the most powerful among us at the moment, unable to break that hold. She was still trying, thrashing in mid-air and yelling something I couldn’t make out, probably because it was profane, and my prissy little translation spell tended to censor stuff like that.
Or maybe because it was old, specifically old spells that started shaking the room from their power, toppling the skeleton piles, and sending the barely held-together guards falling to the ground. One of them lost a head that went rolling across the floor to land at Enid’s feet, causing her to scream and kick the thing. And she kicked it hard, sending it flying against the opposite wall, where it shattered into a dozen pieces.
And yet Bodil had moved not an inch.
“Stop it!” ?subrand yelled. “You’ll kill us all!”
“As long as I kill her, too,” Bodil hissed, looking half mad.
But then the thing-that-wasn’t-Rieni put out a hand, and Bodil froze, her lips pulled back in a snarl, and her eyes wild and burning with still leaping flames. But nothing else on her body moved. I couldn’t have done better myself.
I cleared my throat and hoped my voice wouldn’t squeak. “That’s . . . what we say.”
And I supposed that non-committal answer was good enough since the zombie swiveled those dead eyes back to me. “Yes, I like that phrase. And it is appropriate. I have had to learn many new skills in recent years, and the information I gained from you was invaluable.”
“From . . . me?”
Rieni’s head cocked as if in surprise. “Yes, I had thought you finished when Zeus’s creatures drained you of blood and left you a corpse floating in the water in that other place—what was it called? The cold one with all the ice.”
“Wales,” I whispered, a strange idea forming.
“Yes, that was it. I was bemoaning trusting you only to have you fail so easily. You did not even put up much of a fight.
“But then you did, rising from the beach where they’d dragged you and laying waste. I did not understand it at first, thinking that I must have been mistaken, that you had not been dead, after all. But the more I watched, the more convinced I was that I had been correct the first time and that this was some magic I didn’t know.
“When you finally made your way into my realm and I could see you and your thoughts clearly for the first time, I took that knowledge from you, just in case. I never intended to use it, but a weapon is a weapon. And in this war, needs must, don’t you agree?”
I swallowed, the room swimming a little. Because only one person here could have been in my head through all that. Only one had seen me defy Zeus with some of the only magic he didn’t know. And only one, with her back to the wall and her creatures dying around her, would have been able to reproduce it.
But I still had to hear it.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
“You know who I am,” she said, somewhat impatiently. “I am Faerie and have been waiting for you to arrive for some time. Come. This place is not safe, and we have much to discuss.”
***
“There is nowhere safe above ground and little beneath it,” the zombie said sometime later, chatting casually as the rest of us stumbled along behind her. “But those who share great Poseidon’s blood do not like the creatures who prowl this land any more than you do. The waves offer some protection as a result, as the beasts will not go there.”
She glanced back at me, I guessed to see if I was paying attention, allowing me to see the maggots churning slowly under the skin of her face.
Yeah, that was the problem with zombies, I thought dizzily. The magic that sustained them slowed down normal decomposition but didn’t stop it, and it looked like some serious stuff was going on inside Faerie’s avatar. I wanted to ask how long she’d been that way, when exactly we were, how the hell we’d gotten here, and a whole list of other things.
But I only swallowed thickly and didn’t say anything for fear that I might start screaming.
“So, we must go beneath the sea. Mind the debris,” she added as we entered the throne room I’d expected to see when I first came here.
From what our guide told us, it was the old one, the first seat of power in these lands before the mountain across the water was hollowed out and turned into a fortress. The old palace slowly lost out to the new, becoming first auxiliary housing, then storage, and finally, the stables, as the new digs were expanded and these were no longer needed. But it remained as immovable as ever, built primarily out of stone and timeless in its beauty.
And it was beautiful, as so much was in the land of the fey, although their definition of the term differed somewhat from ours. The people who built this place didn’t care if they had others’ approval or if foreign ambassadors felt at home. They built what they liked, and it reflected their priority, which, judging by the décor, was to project strength.
It still did.
A line of black stone eruptions had been magicked out of the floor, some reaching halfway to the soaring, cavern-like ceiling and delineating a central walkway. They were in more or less matching pairs on either side and slanted toward us like the huge crystal formations they resembled. Or like the swords a bride and groom ran under at a military wedding.
Only those were held aloft by their friends and well-wishers as a salute. These looked more like obsidian daggers and felt like a threat. “You’re here under sufferance,” they seemed to say. “Don’t push it.”
Only someone had.
The walkway between the lines of stone daggers was littered with bones, the “debris” the zombie had mentioned. And as bad as the stables had been, this was worse, with thousands of skeletons visible between the slanted columns of stone, some in piles, and some scattered across the floor like animals had been at them, a few with teeth marks still visible. And while most of the bodies were fey-shaped, some . . . were not.
The latter came in all types and varieties, for the Ancient Horrors were from many species, and they were what Faerie claimed had done this. Which didn’t make sense; none of this did! But whenever I tried to focus enough to get some answers, I glimpsed some new horror, and my brain skittered off somewhere as if trying to hide.
But there was nowhere to go and no safe place to look, even though I didn’t want to see this now. I didn’t want to see this ever! And I mostly wasn’t, as all of that was in the dark peripheries, and my eyes kept going to the only source of light around.
The wide, intimidating walkway led to a throne in the center of the room, although it was less of a chair than an eruption of natural rock half as high as the columns, a miniature mountain. A shelf had been carved three-quarters of the way up where I guessed pillows had once been piled for Nimue to sit on. It was empty now and bathed in a slant of faint moonlight from far above, adding to its already eerie air.
Like at the canal, there was no great river. I could see the channel for it snaking across the ceiling, but it was gone, with only the dim light from outside filtering in like spectral fingers. The height of this place ensured that most of the beams scattered and petered out before they hit down, leaving us trudging through almost darkness.
I, for one, was glad of it. The less I saw of this place, the better, but bad lighting didn’t affect my ears. And our footsteps rang on the floor, almost shockingly loud in the silence.
“When is this?” Bodil demanded abruptly, cutting off the running commentary that Faerie had been providing.
She might have learned to talk our way but hadn’t learned when to shut up. Or any diplomacy, as she stopped and turned obligingly toward Bodil, who had remained silent since being released in the office. She answered her in a friendly tone but with no effort to soften the blow.
“It has been more than fifty years since you vanished. You were in the pool, fighting near each other, then you were gone.”
“Gone where? This isn’t my city!” Bodil hissed. “This is some sort of . . . of illusion meant to trick us!”
Tried that one, I thought. But the denial phase had been short, as this wasn’t my home. How much harder must this be for Bodil, who was seeing the destruction of everything she knew?
And everyone.
Like we were going to do if we went back to Earth. Even the thought made me dizzy again, and my knees wanted to give way. What the hell had gone wrong?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, which was a bad sign. Like the fact that none of us had asked any questions on the walk here until Bodil recovered enough to do so. We’d been in shock at the enormity of what we were seeing, and I, for one, still was.
But I straightened my shoulders a little, stopped gazing around like a wide-eyed tourist, and tried to concentrate. There were things we needed to know. And Pritkin seemed to agree because he spoke up.
“This isn’t an illusion,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve been trained to see through them—”
“And you think I haven’t?” Bodil snarled. “I was here when your pyramids were built, boy!”
“Then you know I’m right.”
Faerie nodded along, still giving that vaguely pleasant smile that was creeping me out. It reminded me of Adra, the leader of the Demon High Council, who wore a glamourie so that people didn’t kill themselves in terror when they looked at him. But it wasn’t much of an improvement, and neither was this.
“It isn’t anyone’s city,” she said placidly. “It is a tomb, like most of my lands.”
“ Your lands?” Bodil said because, apparently, she hadn’t understood all that back in the office. Or maybe she hadn’t been able to hear in her frozen state. Not that it probably would have mattered.
Looking at her granddaughter must have been excruciating; I doubt I could have focused, either.
“I am Faerie,” Faerie repeated patiently. “Your goddess.”
“I have no goddess!” Bodil spat.
“No, I shouldn’t think you would like that term after the Great Huntress took your sire and husband both in one day,” Faerie agreed, and I stopped breathing. “Oh, you didn’t know?” she asked, seeing whatever was on my face.
Pritkin got between me and Bodil, like that was going to matter. “She didn’t like your mother,” I thought numbly. Way to understate it!
Yet she’d saved me more than once.
“Why help me?” I whispered, meeting Bodil’s fiery red eyes. “You saved me in the pool, and then again after we came here—”
“My champion turned out to be disappointing,” she said, shooting ?subrand a purely vicious look. “And Feltin was compromised. You might try to drag us into war, but at least it would be on the right side. If I couldn’t win, better you and your puppet than—”
“He’s not my puppet—”
“We’re all puppets!” she roared, passing Pritkin before either of us could react and getting in my face. “It’s all the gods know, all they understand! My father was a minor river god, Aliacmon—have you ever even heard of him?”
“No.”
“No.” Her face twisted bitterly. “Neither have most people. He was nothing, a nobody in the vaulted pantheon, barely acknowledged as a god. One of the ones who couldn’t feed as effectively as the mighty and would never have their power.
“Yet she killed him. And when my husband tried to intervene, she killed him, too. My father was a resource to great Artemis, someone with a power she needed. He could travel anywhere, even into the hells, where gods far greater than he struggled to go. And she killed him for it.
“Do you understand ? Not because he hurt her—as if he could! Or offended her. He was a tool and nothing more. Just as we all are, the only difference is that I know it!
“But I didn’t want my family to.” She looked at her granddaughter and her face crumpled, with the light suddenly dying in her eyes. “Your mother?” she whispered.
“The Lady ?rindís is dead,” Faerie replied, but with a slight frown as if some of Bodil’s anguish had gotten through.
“Then they’re all gone. Everyone.”
She sat down suddenly on the floor and did not look like she planned to get up again.
Faerie’s frown grew.
“They are dead in this time,” she said slowly. “But not in the other. You can go back. Put all this right—”
“Can we?” Bodil asked, her face expressionless. It didn’t help that she was looking at me and that I . . . didn’t have good news for her.
I licked dry lips. “I . . . don’t understand what happened to us or how Tony did . . . whatever he did,” I said. “But . . .”
“But?” Pritkin spoke that time, looking intense. As if he already sensed the truth.
“But Pythias don’t deal with the future, as it doesn’t yet exist for us. Navigating to it would be like . . . like trying to vacation in a town that hasn’t been built yet or moving into a house that isn’t finished or even started.”
I was struggling to explain as I didn’t have the words prepared. This wasn’t something Gertie had taught me, as there was nothing to teach. The future was as closed and locked for us as for anyone else.
It was the province of its own Pythia, only here . . . there was none. We would absolutely have met her already if so, as this kind of incursion would have rung every alarm bell she had. And the fact that we were in Faerie wouldn’t change that, as there was no division anymore.
It was all the realm of the gods now.
“Cassie?” Pritkin prodded, but I only shook my head. This was why I hadn’t been asking questions; this train of thought led to madness. What had I done ?
I had abandoned my post; that’s what I’d done, and the fact that I hadn’t meant to do it or wanted to go didn’t matter. I had left, and a timeline cannot be without a Pythia. So, when my power returned, understood that I was missing and wasn’t coming back, what did it do?
Where did it go?
Who had been here, trying to hold everything together, when the gods returned?
“Cassie?” Pritkin prodded more forcefully, and I was glad for it. I couldn’t think, couldn’t face it, didn’t want to know.
“We can’t travel there unless taken by someone from that time,” I said harshly, desperately trying to concentrate while horror ate at my vision. “So, even if Tony somehow accessed our power, as Jonathan did, there’s no way—”
“Jonathan?” ?subrand interrupted, probably because he knew that name. He should; the bastard had been working for his father.
“A dark mage who used an ancient tool of the gods to graft part of the soul of a Pythian acolyte onto his own, borrowing access to our power,” I said and saw his eyes widen.
He appeared to be having a bad day, but unfortunately for him, so was I, to the point of barely staying on my feet. I was in no mood to soft-peddle anything. Which wouldn’t help us anyway.
“But even assuming that was the case here, it wouldn’t matter,” I continued. “I couldn’t have gotten us here, and neither could an acolyte. It isn’t possible—”
“And yet, we are here,” Enid said. I’d almost forgotten her, as she’d been so quiet. She looked like she might regret her earlier outburst, as making an enemy of Bodil wasn’t a great idea. Or maybe she was just as spooked as the rest of us.
“But you don’t need to take us into the future,” Alphonse said. “You don’t gotta deal with this at all. Just get us back to where we belong. A jump into the past is all we need!”
He looked at me as they were all doing now, and I looked mutely back.
“Cassie?” Pritkin said quietly.
I swallowed and faced the other half of the problem that had white noise filling my head and threatening my sanity, what remained of it. “We’ve been here for what?” I said. “A few hours?”
He nodded. “About that.”
“The portal’s cycle isn’t that long. I timed it before, and it seemed to be ten to twelve minutes. Maybe fifteen; I’m not completely sure, but . . .”
“Just say it!” Bodil snapped. “Your power doesn’t work here, does it?”
“Well, of course not,” Faerie said as if that should be obvious. “When she vanished, it went to her heir.”
“Rhea,” I whispered, feeling like I’d just been punched in the gut. It was the name I hadn’t been able to say or even think. Rhea. . . An abrupt cascade of goosebumps flooded my body. “Is she—”
“She lives,” Faerie said, “but the gods locked down her power so that she cannot use it. She is kept like a trophy in her old court in Las Vegas but helpless. A symbol of their ascendancy.”
“Why not just kill her?” Pritkin asked, his hand under my elbow, steadying me.
“They could kill her but not the power, which would merely go to someone else as soon as she died. The only way to rid themselves of it was to consume it, which they were afraid to do as it originally came from Apollo, a powerful source. And it has since learned to hate them.
“It would be like ingesting poison.”
“So they imprison it by imprisoning her,” Alphonse said, and the sudden enormity of it all hit me—what she must have gone through, what she must have suffered. All alone and only half-trained—
I made a sound—I don’t even know what kind—and Faerie looked at me. And this time, the smile faltered slightly. “Rhea cannot use the power, but you can,” she told me. “It should return to you once you reenter Earth and it senses your presence. All you have to do is evade the gods, visit your heir, find out what happened to cause all this, return to your time, and prevent it.”
“Oh. Is that all,” I said blankly.
“Yes. Now, we must get you out of here, all of you. Come with me.”