Chapter Thirty-Five
O kay, no,” Alphonse said.
After what felt like forever, because this cavern was immense, with a ceiling that soared so high that it almost felt like being outside, we’d finally made it to the throne. Only now, I wished we hadn’t. This place had been built here for a reason, and it hadn’t been the excellent acoustics.
I stared into the black water of a jagged crevasse behind the massive stone chair and felt all the hair on my body stand up.
What the hell was down there?
“This is where the Margygr used to pay court on Nimue,” Faerie told us, still playing tour guide. “This was their realm before she arrived and took the area for herself, demanding that they send representatives to her court as hostages for their good behavior. This was where they came and went after she forced the waters back and changed their course.”
She gestured at the colossal cavern. “This was all underwater once, but after she finished her conquest, she made it into her throne room. It had been the Margygr seat of power, and I think she liked forcing them to make obeisance in their former great hall.”
“Sounds like Nimue,” Bodil murmured.
“But it is fortunate for our purposes, as it leads past the Margygr realm and into the new palace complex. The portal was shut down once the invasion began but not destroyed. You should be able to get out that way once you restart it.”
I glanced around, but nobody looked relieved. Everybody was looking the way I felt, a combination of shock and alarm. Because there was something wrong with that pit.
There was something very wrong.
“Is there another way?” Bodil asked as she could sense it, too.
“Not one you would survive,” Faerie said pleasantly. “You’ve seen the land route; it is impassable. And even if you did fight your way through, the palace is flooded, a last-ditch attempt by the defenders to hold off the creatures the gods sent against them. It failed, and in the end, no one was left to drain it.”
“Okay, but if we gotta swim either way. . .” Alphonse said, speaking for all of us.
“The portal is on the lower levels, leaving you to swim down many floors to reach it, and those floors are filled with perils. Many creatures have taken refuge in the palace now that the land is overrun, and . . . some of them are hungry. This way, you can take the lower entrance and come out quite nearby.”
Nobody said anything, but nobody moved, either.
“Maybe we could drain the palace?” I offered, hopefully. Swimming through a pitch-black sea to a flooded labyrinth of corridors to find a portal we might not be able to get working again anyway wasn’t my idea of fun. Especially through that water.
God, what was wrong with it?
“It has a fell nature,” ?subrand said, kneeling by the side of the pit. It was deep, maybe five feet from where we stood to the water itself, down a craggy gap with large black rocks all around. It forced him to lean over to get close, and I had to stop myself from pulling him back despite the fact that I didn’t even like him.
He reached out a hand, making me wonder if he was completely crazy. But just before it touched the surface, he jerked it back, although it was mailed. There were some things that even dragonscale didn’t help.
“It’s cursed,” Pritkin confirmed, staring at it.
“Can you lift it?” I asked because I really, really hoped so. My goosebumps had goosebumps, and I hadn’t even touched the stuff. I couldn’t imagine going down there, submerging myself under those inky waves, feeling them close over my head—
A shudder went through me, my whole body revolting at the very thought.
Pritkin didn’t immediately reply. He just knelt by the crag, but instead of reaching down as ?subrand had, he hovered his hand over the top as if feeling the heat of a fire. Only there was no fire here. Instead, the closer I got to the water, the colder it felt, like a portal straight to the Arctic.
I backed off a bit because my cred as a badass demigoddess had already been shattered by having to be hauled around over Alphonse’s shoulder like a toddler, but Pritkin stayed put. In contrast to ?subrand, he looked fairly barbaric—shirtless, with muddy spikes in his hair, and a body painted with streaks that looked more pale than dark in the moonlight. Like a pagan priest caught in the middle of a ritual.
One that he wasn’t enjoying, as slowly, a strange look came over his face. It took me a moment to recognize it as shock. “I don’t know this magic,” he whispered.
“I am sure there are many forms you don’t know,” ?subrand sneered.
“No,” Pritkin sounded bewildered rather than insulted. “There aren’t.” He looked up at Faerie. “What is this?”
“The Margygr cursed it to protect their realm from the gods’ creatures as they did all access points to their kingdom.”
“And the gods didn’t care?” I asked, staring at the inky darkness.
Unlike normal water, it didn’t reflect anything. The serpentine-shaped hole in the roof was letting in a flood of moonlight, but none was dancing on the surface of that stuff, not so much as a ripple. And sure, maybe that was the sides of the crevasse shading it, but I didn’t believe it.
I didn’t believe it at all.
Faerie shrugged. “The Margygr are . . . temperamental. And as they had effectively trapped themselves, why interfere? It was easier to let them be.
“They also butcher anyone who dares to enter their realm.”
“Oh. Oh, really?” Alphonse blinked at her. “You mean the very thing you are telling us to do?”
“We should drain the palace,” I said more forcefully.
But Faerie was shaking her borrowed head.
“The controls for that are also in the palace,” she told me patiently. “And it would take some time—time you do not have.”
“W-why do we not?” Enid whispered. She was looking more ghost-like by the moment, with her now clean but still damp hair straggling around her face and her already pale skin dead white around her scars.
Faerie sighed. “Did you not hear me? I explained this earlier.”
“We were looking at the bodies,” I said.
Faerie tilted her head. “Why? They are dead.”
“Yeah, like we’re going to be if we go down there!” Alphonse exploded. “You just said the Margygr kill anyone who comes into their realm!”
Faerie frowned. “Yes, but not you. They should protect you, or at the least, not interfere.”
“And why should they do that?”
Faerie looked at Enid, who stared back in shock.
“You told the others that you wished to fight, did you not?” the zombie pressed.
“Yes, but . . . not them,” Enid whispered. “Not them!”
Faerie looked like we were giving her a headache. “Not fight them, girl. Fight with them. You are one of them, after all, aren’t you?”
But Enid was backing away, was shaking her head, was looking like she was about to—
And there she went, running across the dark floor as fast as a fleeing doe. But Alphonse was faster, and he went after her. And brought her back the same way he’d been carting me around.
Only she was beating on his back, kicking her feet in the air, and making it clear in no uncertain terms that she was not okay with Faerie’s suggestion.
“Enid,” I said, and she stopped kicking for long enough to look at me. “Are you Margygr?”
She didn’t look it. There were no gills I could see, and her features were human, not the human-ish ones of the merfolk. The full-blooded ones had huge eyes for seeing underwater, wider-than-normal mouths, and flat little noses that melted into the skin of their faces the way a human’s never did.
They also had a variety of skin and hair colors, none of which were found naturally on Earth, and subtle scale designs on their skin when they caught the light just right, as I’d seen on some of those in Nimue’s ballroom. And that was in their human form. In their altered state . . . well, then they didn’t look human at all.
None of which was true of Enid.
“Are you?” I asked because she was just looking at me, defiant and proud yet somehow miserable.
“Put me down!” she told Alphonse, who obliged, although he looked pointedly at her legs.
“I don’t have a tail!” she snapped.
“Just checking.”
“Enid?” I pressed. I hated to do it, as she’d been through hell already, as we all had. But if she had any pull. . .
“They hate me,” she said shortly.
“What did you do?” Alphonse asked, which earned him a purely vicious look. If he was trying for boyfriend material, he was missing by a mile.
“I didn’t do anything!” she said bitterly. “Other than being born. My grandmother met one of their emissaries at court and fell pregnant. She was a servant, of course, and he was one of their nobles. But she regularly cleaned his rooms and . . .” she shrugged.
“And when she told him?” Pritkin asked, although he looked like he already knew the answer.
“He gave her a plant they use and advised her to make tea with it. It took her a while to realize what he meant. He wanted her to kill me, as it would make him look bad to have a part-human child. A disgrace, he called it.”
“Here?” I said. Because if ever there was a place that didn’t mind that sort of thing. . .
She made a face. “They send their people to court to protect their interests, not for any real loyalty. They look down on the fey, even the highborn, whereas we humans. . . We’re nothing to them—less than animals.”
“Yet he didn’t mind crawling into bed with an ‘animal,’” I said, feeling my color rise.
“Men,” she and Bodil said together and then looked at each other in surprise.
I guessed some things were universal.
“I’m only a quarter as a result,” Enid continued. “And they do not claim me or allow me to claim them. When I fled to them after . . .” she gestured at her face. “They wouldn’t help me. They said my grandmother should have done as instructed and spared us all. They had me beaten for daring to enter their halls and threw me out.
“They swore to kill me if I ever returned—and anyone with me.”
“Sounds familiar,” Pritkin said. He’d had much the same reception when he’d visited his fey relatives and been made to regret it.
“Much has happened since then,” Faerie said. “The shocks they have endured may have taught them wisdom.”
“And if they haven’t ?” Enid demanded.
The shrug was back. “Then you must decide who you would rather face, your kin or the Horrors.”
“Well, isn’t this just peachy,” Alphonse said savagely.
“I did not say it would be easy,” Faerie said. “But the passage between here and the palace was destroyed in the siege, and you saw what trying to go aboveground is like.” She paused slightly. “It is a short swim—”
Alphonse had things to say about that, as it seemed that, unlike the rest of us, he had been paying attention. Only he’d thought I could rest up and shift us back, so he hadn’t cared. Now that he realized it wouldn’t work that way, he was starting to freak out.
No shame, I thought, staring at the inky water.
No shame at all.
“If you’re a goddess, how about some help!” Alphonse snarled at Faerie.
“I am helping you to the extent of my abilities.”
“That I do not believe,” ?subrand said. Suddenly, he looked less like a bedraggled war veteran and more like a prince. The moonlight loved him, turning his hair to silver fire and making his frosty complexion look more alive. Instead of a statue carved out of marble, cold and unfeeling, he had a faint blush on his cheeks and silver flames for eyes.
He didn’t seem to like what he took to be blasphemy.
“If you are who you say, nothing should be beyond you,” he added. “This is your realm.”
“ Was my realm,” Faerie snapped, showing genuine emotion for the first time. “It is mine no longer. I am a fugitive in my own world, forced to hide from beings who would devour me, as they have so many of my children.
“They are lost now, millions of them. Most of them, if truth be told, even in your father’s kingdom, young one. Worse, they are not dead; I could recover them if they were merely dead. They are gone, devoured by the gods and those things the gods sent as a plague upon me.”
“Devoured?” ?subrand looked like that did not compute. “You lie. We are their servants—”
“Treacherous, deceitful servants,” I pointed out. I doubted he’d been planning to use his newfound kingdom to help dear old Dad in his bring-back-the-gods quest. Bodil wouldn’t have partnered with him if so.
“Perhaps,” the prince said. “But my father is not. He has risked much for his plans, ill-advised as they may be—”
“Which preserved his life, however little he may be enjoying it,” Faerie said with an edge to her voice. “But when the gates vomited forth the gods and their beastly dogs, they feasted on everyone else. They were starving after so long, and, well. There are many ways to serve, are there not?”
?subrand stared at her in shock.
“She means serving yourself up on a platter, princeling,” Enid said, in case he hadn’t understood. “I suppose we’re all equal now, aren’t we? Just food for the gods’ . . . and their dogs.”
“Shut your mouth, slave!” he snarled, turning on her, his shock shifting to anger in an eyeblink.
And met the same fire in her eyes. I didn’t know what her problem with him was, but she obviously had one. Maybe because he was the pampered son of the king who had been slaughtering all those part-human soldiers for so long.
Or maybe for the same reason I didn’t like him.
He always looked like the rest of us smelled bad.
Enid smiled. It wasn’t a particularly nice one. And then she repeated what Alphonse had said to me at the mouth of the tunnel. “Make me.”
Alphonse barked out a laugh, also getting the reference. “We’ll make a human out of you yet,” he told her and grabbed ?subrand by the arm. “Touch her and die.”
“I have no intention of touching her!” ?subrand spat, throwing off his hold. “I do not consort with slaves, much less half-breed bas—”
He stopped abruptly because Enid’s wand was in his face, almost touching his nose.
I didn’t know she’d had one, as I hadn’t seen it before. I guessed she reserved it for when she really wanted to get nasty. And damn it, we didn’t have time for this!
And for once, Alphonse seemed to agree. “Kill him later,” he advised. “Save your strength.”
“Yes,” Faerie said. “You will need it.” She looked at Alphonse, and her voice strengthened, echoing around the great space. “I told you the truth, vampire; my people were slaughtered, and with them went pieces of my very soul. The same soul that gives me my power. So, I cannot do more for you than I am. This is your fight, and if you do not win it, all of us are doomed.”
“Win it how?” Pritkin asked. “What went wrong? You said we need to find Rhea to tell us. Does that mean you don’t know?”
“Yes, I am afraid so. Zeus realized I had allied myself with you and thus made his plans elsewhere, beyond my vision. I cannot see outside my realm unless one of my people is there, or there is a gate, what you call a portal, that gives me a hazy vision for a space around it.
“He well knew this. And when the Black Day came, it originated from beyond—from Earth.”
“The place you want to send us to,” Alphonse said heavily.
“The place you must go to find out what happened. All I can tell you is this: Shortly after you vanished, Feltin’s champion won the challenge. That was followed by many days of feasting and celebrations, but Feltin was not there. He crowned Lord S?tórr, but even at the ceremony, he was distracted, almost as if it no longer mattered. He immediately left for Earth thereafter and was still there when the invasion came. It was as if something had been decided in that short time.”
“It was,” I croaked, my throat feeling half closed. I looked up and met Pritkin’s eyes.
“Zeus realized I was beyond his grasp,” he said.
I nodded. “And got tired of waiting.”
“Yes,” Faerie said. “I thought it might be something like that.”
“Something like what?” Bodil demanded. “What are you talking about?”
“The young one can multiply magic,” Faerie said. “It was an ability great Artemis craved and slaughtered his grandfather for.” She saw Bodil’s shock. “Yes, little one. Yours was not the only family ravaged by the gods’ lust for power.”
“But . . . but you’re with her ?” Bodil asked Pritkin, glancing from me to him. “Why?”
“She’s not her mother,” he said simply.
Bodil scowled.
“Artemis used demon magic to overwhelm the gods, taking on the entire pantheon by herself,” Faerie added. “She could not have done it without those borrowed abilities. They are . . . impressive.”
And, suddenly, it was Pritkin’s turn to have everyone stare at him.