Chapter 4 The Songbird
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SONGBIRD
The woman, flanked by two guards in silver bracers and blue tunics, led us down a narrow corridor. Rafters that came to a point overhead were draped in satin banners with curious constellations glittering in the light.
My toes hardly touched the woven runners, always ready to race away, always spinning about, looking for the wretched grin on Larsson’s face. One I’d considered friendly not so long ago.
“We’ll walk alone, Dorsan,” the woman said to the guard on her right. He was young in the face, but stern as stone.
One tilt to his head and the second guard halted in the doorway, giving us freedom to enter a forest pathway that carved through bowers of trees and shrubs.
Verdant canopies of branches intertwined like knobby fingers. Glossy black ferns lined the path, trapped midnight woven in the velvet leaves, and serpentine wooden walkways honeycombed throughout the forest, up slopes and down into ravines.
Each walkway lifted over stilts lost beneath water with no current. Stagnate tides were left to gather foamy green blossoms over the surface until the black water looked like a meadow of grass.
“Follow that path”—the woman gestured inward—“and you’ll meet the swamplands. Beautiful, but dangerous should you not keep to the path. However, sun wings are friendly enough to light safe steps should they find you appealing enough.”
“Sun wings?”
The woman flicked her fingers in front of her face. “Tiny insects that flicker with gold. Rather beautiful, but wholly suspicious little things.”
Milky blossoms were carried on the breeze, a collision of sweet and silk buried under the brine of the nearby sea. Cerulean tides glowed like fire beneath the setting sun.
“You may want to flee,” she whispered, “but your enemies crafted a rather sturdy spell cast while you slept. It binds you to their presence, so if they remain on the shores, so do you. I assure you the Otherworld will call should you try to leave.”
“Exactly the thing a captor would say.” I angled for another path, ready to sprint through the trees.
A hand curled around my arm. “Be still. I will take you.”
This had to be a jest, some sort of trick, but without protest, the woman carved through the trees, directed at the shore.
One glance over my shoulder, one weary breath, and I followed.
By the time trees thinned and only spiked leaves of strange shrubs irritated my ankles, my strange companion held out an arm. “Wait. There is a ward buried deep here” She reached for a knobby branch, fallen in the foliage, and tossed it over the border of the wood.
Once the limb landed, the sand and pebbles swallowed it until only one sharp end was not submerged. Earth hardened, trapping the limb in place.
The woman sighed. “A snare spell. Not deadly, but I’ve no doubt the sea witch feels a bit of resentment toward you and would let you rot in the sun should you be caught.”
Despair cinched in my chest.
“I can take it,” said the woman. “This is not a blood spell.”
“Take it?”
“Yes.” The barest of grins twitched in the corner of her mouth. “I have ways to take matter as I please. Spell casts, affinities, all magic is matter unseen. If you wish to prove my words at the sea, I will take it so we may cross.”
“Why would you help me?”
“In truth?” The woman smoothed her slender hands over the folds of her gown.
“I’m rather irritated by all the spell work on my isle.
We can hardly walk anywhere without snares or sharp edges protruding into our flesh, trying to stop us.
And”—another hesitation—“there is a disquiet in my heart. I’m not satisfied with the tales I’ve been told as to why you are here. ”
Perhaps I was na?ve in the art of war and battle and enemies.
My sheltered, love-soaked life had lent few opportunities to truly face deception from those I knew.
She could be lying, could be leading me toward a trap.
Still, there was a softness to her features.
A nudge from somewhere in my veins—fury magic or instinct—that urged me to keep calm at her side.
“Prove your words then,” I said. “Get us to the shore.”
“Hold steady. We’re close enough you may be caught within the removal.” She splayed her fingers over the shrubs and sand.
In the next breath, I was bound in cold, a breeze like frost. Speckles of damp misted over my face, tossing me this way and that until I landed face down on the forest floor.
I coughed and sat up. Nothing seemed to have changed. The sea remained fifty paces away, the forest unmoved.
“It’s gone.” Behind me the woman stood, hands clasped, starlight hair whipping around her features. A sheen of mist recoiled into the lines of her palms. With her chin, she pointed at the limb she’d tossed.
Hells, where it had been sunk in hardened earth, now it was free and coated in soft sand as though it had fallen there with intent.
Without pause, we stepped from the trees and onto the shore.
“You broke the ward?” The question came as a whisper, more a musing for myself, but the woman nodded.
“Now we’ll be able to cross from the trees to the shore without incident.” The woman strode toward the water’s edge. “Well, prove what I say. Give it a go.”
Tucked in the back of my skull, I knew, logically I knew, she was being truthful. There was no way I would be allowed to flee. Still, I could not resist; there was nothing I wouldn’t risk to get back to Erik Bloodsinger. I darted for the sea. When water struck my knees came the sharp jolt of pain.
I screamed and fell back into the lazy lap of waves.
Gentle hands scooped under my arms, lifting me from the sea. “As I said. The first thing that was done when you entered the borders of Natthaven was ensuring you remained within them.”
“So take it away as you did the other. Please.”
A shadow burdened her features. “Blood spells are another sort of matter. They are always removed with pain, anger, cruelty, all manner of viciousness. I cannot take in such a way. This ward—” She faced the sea again. “I dare not touch.”
I shook her off. Seated in the shallows, I hugged my knees to my chest, and screamed—pain, rage, despair. All of it rose to the pink clouds. Throat ragged, I reeled on the woman. “Why are you doing this? Let me go, and I swear to you, the loyalty of the Ever will be yours. We will help you.”
Without a care for the water, the elven sat with me. Her knees and gown hugged against her chest much the same. Almost friendly.
She studied the bloody gleam on the horizon, the last remnants of day, as purple dusk with the earliest stars speckled the upper skies. “Natthaven is a peaceful isle. Some have even named it the fading isle.”
“Why is that?”
“The isle can fade into the mist.” The woman smiled.
A touch of pride crinkled the corners of her eyes.
“A gift from the gods, I like to think. Should we be threatened, we can take the whole of our clan to safety. Or, I suppose, if we are . . . forced to relocate . . .” She hesitated, smile fading.
Something about the last words seemed to grate at her. “Natthaven will shift elsewhere.”
“The land itself holds magic?”
“Doesn’t every land?” She tilted her head. “I am told your ability comes from the soil. You’ve accomplished feats in your realms and the sea. I would believe there is magic in all lands.”
A wicked curl pulled at my lips. “Perhaps I will destroy yours with my fury if it gets me free of here.”
“I think Natthaven would be rather offended should you try. You’d be better suited to call to the gentility of the affinity in our soil to aid you, rather than destroy it.
Magic is fickle across realms, is it not?
Offend it, and it seems content to punish for the sin.
Take your sea kingdom’s blight as proof. ”
“How did you know?” I shook my head. It didn’t matter how she knew things, not really. “That was a sea witch curse that lost control.”
“Oh, true. In a sense,” she said, almost indignantly, “the witch and Larsson were not ready for the consequences of their dark spells. Like I said, blood spells and dark magic create a different sort of physical matter, or remnant. The blight you see is a dreary remnant of what was done to bring us to this moment.”
“What was done?”
The woman considered me for a breath. “I told you, fae. This is not an attack that has been built on a whim. It has been planned, executed for turns, and the sea kingdom is no simple thing to overthrow. Dark spells, clearly, were needed.”
The darkening was potent, damn near painful, when my fury slid into what was done to cause it. Death, agony. I’d known something in the soil spoke to me whenever I dug deep with my fury. It made a bit of sense that wretched magic would leave behind cruel remnants that ached.
“You speak like it is nothing, yet I see the disgust in your eyes.”
She hesitated. “I may disagree with some actions of others, but I’m in no position to fret about your troubles when I have my own folk to consider.”
I shook my head, agitated. I didn’t understand the woman’s kindness, yet refusal to truly help. If she was a prisoner here, then she had found her greatest ally.
“So, what I know of your isle is it is small but can fade into the mists.” I looked over my shoulder. Dark spires of a stone palace rose over the treetops. “You can take away spells through your magic?”
“Affinity,” she corrected. “I can take any physical matter. Stone, wood, flesh, if I truly focus.”
“But not blood spells.”
Her jaw flexed. “It is to the benefit of everyone if I avoid taking anything that brings the darker sides of the heart—greed, pain, hate—such things as those. Blood spells are crafted through dark desires, through death, through greedy motivations, after all.”
The way she spoke, so plainly as though everything was so damn obvious, was amusing. “Ah, well, I have not one bit of confusion any longer.”