Chapter 31 Dimhollow
Dimhollow
Eloise
Disguised again as a peasant girl, I navigate the streets of Aendor toward Wickham Wood.
Tempest wasn’t exaggerating. The port city is lousy with silver coats.
Too many. Most of them look bored, as if they’ve been asked to guard a single square foot of sand and now don’t know what to do with themselves.
I slip past them easily, the raven and its cage concealed in my rucksack.
When I’m far from the crowded streets, I cloak myself in invisibility and run for the border.
Phantom meets me halfway, and I climb aboard their back, securing the cage to the saddle.
The message that I’m coming is already attached to the raven’s leg.
We rise into the night, and I release the bird, then follow it toward Dimhollow.
When I last left the village, the witches were at a lower altitude, although the bitter cold told a different story.
Mount Perilon is enchanted to always be winter, a determined frigidity that is the same at every elevation.
As I close in on the new location of the village, snow stings my skin like a million needles, and I shiver violently in Phantom’s saddle.
Even we are cold, they say into my head. And we are dead.
Do we have a warming spell to counteract the chill? I ask.
Won’t work against this magic.
I drop our invisibility and pray to the goddess that Catarina received our message. She must have, because I see her run from her thatched-roof house and wave her arms frantically at me, holding out her hands in the universal stop signal. I pull back on Phantom and circle in place.
“What do you think she’s trying to tell us?” I scream into the icy wind.
Phantom rumbles their discomfort. I don’t know, darling, but I’d prefer a warm fire to whatever this is we’re doing.
Catarina appears to be doing an interpretive dance, flapping her arms and spinning while her mouth moves in a rhythm as if she’s singing a song I can’t hear.
Then she pulls back a hand and throws an invisible ball toward me.
A violet ripple casts across the sky, and I gasp.
Thousands of icicles point in an arch above the village, daggers promising to shred anything that attacks from the sky.
“How do I get in?” I cry, although there is no way Catarina can hear me over the roar of the wind. Still, she gestures to my left. A break in the icicles forms a perfect, unguarded circle.
Can we fit? I ask Phantom.
Lie flat against me, darling. One way or another, we’re going in.
Phantom circles, tucks in their wings, and we dive.
“Ahh!” I howl when an icicle clips their wing, a bloody slash appearing on my arm a second before the front of my calf slices open.
Phantom roars. I can feel the witch’s death magic squirming through my body like icy worms. We careen toward the space between the cottages, Phantom’s injured wing refusing to properly hold their weight.
Until Catarina extends a hand and we slow to a stop, dropping the last foot or so to the frozen earth.
“All the gods and souls in the Darklands, what do you think you’re doing, Eloise Hymir? You’re lucky you didn’t get yourself killed!”
“Need to talk to you,” I whimper.
“So I gather!” Catarina yells. “I was attempting to tell you to wait until I could make the entry point bigger. What did you think I was doing down here?”
“Interpretive dance?” I give a pained smile, and my teeth chatter.
She gives me a confused and pointed look.
“What? And when did you find the dragon? Oh, never mind. It can wait. If we don’t get the antidote into you, I’ll be feeding you by spoon for the next three days.
Come to my cottage. Bring your—” she circles her hand toward Phantom, whose injured wing now appears skinless and skeletal “—familiar. I’ll fix them too. ”
I limp after her toward the cottage that is quite obviously all hers, designed of twisted wood and tangled ivy, windows cloudy as baked sugar and perfumed by the scent of herbal tea that wafts from beneath the front door.
Phantom disappears as I cross the threshold, still with me, but in their incorporeal state, and I rush to flop onto the sofa.
Catarina comes to me with a pot of tea and an herbal compress. “Next time, send the raven in advance! I barely had time to keep you from shredding yourself.”
My brow furrows. I love Catarina, but hot, violent anger boils up in me, and I need to release some steam.
“Why didn’t you know I was coming? Why didn’t you suspect we’d need your help at some point?
Do you even know what’s happening down there?
” I point a hand in the direction I think is downhill.
“People are dying, Catarina. Children have been drugged into slavery. The resistance is running out of time. Entire villages are being burned to the ground. You sit up here in your bubble of ice, and you think you are playing the role of some neutral good, some benevolent observer. When really, all you are is a community that did nothing, does nothing, but waits until fate catches up with you. And then, whatever happens, however many die and whatever atrocities occur, you’ll blame the stars, even as your own witches burn.
Why haven’t you asked what your witches could do to help in this war?
Why haven’t you checked in on the health and well-being of people who are supposed to be your friends?
Why haven’t you provided us a key to enter your castle of ice when we need you?
You offer your hand, Catarina, and then yank it away when we need it most. So don’t chide me for bulldozing through your icicle dome.
Take accountability for making it so that I had to! ”
Catarina’s eyebrows have lifted into her tangle of dark, graying hair.
Her lips twitch, but she does not speak.
She threads her fingers together in front of her hips.
“This may be a good time to mention that the healing tea I’ve given you has a side effect of irritability and verity. I think we can assume it’s working.”
I glance down at the gash in my arm to find it fully healed, as is the one on my calf. “So it is,” I say flatly.
She pours me another cup, and her voice is soft as she asks, “Should I also treat your dragon?”
I reach down my bond with Phantom and check on them. “No. They’re healed. We are connected. When you healed me, you healed them.”
She wipes her hands on her apron. “How convenient.”
The heat from the fire finally seems to reach my skin, and I shift uneasily on her sofa. “About what I said before… Perhaps I was a bit harsh.”
“No, you have a point, Eloise. The witches of Dimhollow have long been observers, but it is by necessity, not by intention. We are not warriors. Our magic is predominantly defensive by nature. We are small in number and limited in usefulness when it comes to war. However, we still protect and house the former queen and princess of Stygarde, and I assure you, after you’ve won this war, we will aid in healing those who survive. ”
I twirl a finger in my hair. “So…if there were a way you could help, you would? You just believe there’s nothing you can do?”
“Exactly,” she says with some measure of relief.
Check and mate. “I’m glad to hear that, because there is something you can do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The night Damien rescued me from Entrydal, you gave me an antidote that made me expel Nevina’s tracker. I need that antidote. We need to use it to free Stygarde’s children from Nevina’s enchantment.”
“Who said I gave you an antidote?” Catarina tilts her head inquisitively.
“Damien. He said you had a crystal that could detect the tracker inside me, a tracker I’d ingested weeks before, and that you’d given me a potion that made me expel it.”
“Yes, I have a potion that will make the children expel what magic is in their bodies, but what if the spell she’s given them isn’t a gumdrop like she fed you, but a tea fully absorbed into their blood? What if the magic has fused to their bones?”
“Can elven magic do that?”
She scoffs. “That and worse. When I gave you that elixir, I wasn’t sure you’d survive it. I risked it because none of us would have survived if I hadn’t. Without knowing the nature of the spell on the children, we risk injuring or even killing a great number of them.”
I cringe at the idea of intentionally hurting Stygarde’s children, but my mind keeps turning over her story, considering how she relieved me of Nevina’s tracker, the risk she took on me.
“You gave me the antidote because you knew that even though there was a chance I might die, if you didn’t give it to me, we would all die. ”
“Yes.”
“If we don’t cure those children, Catarina, they will all die, some of them at the hands of the people who love them most. Nevina will wield them as a weapon. The scenario is the same. It’s dangerous but necessary.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t guarantee it will work if—”
“Life has no guarantees. All of us live in that knowledge every day. What we have now is hope. You and this potion are the best hope for saving these children and saving Tenebris.”
Quiet brews between us in the warm, herbal-scented air, her fingers tangling in her apron. “The herbs necessary for the potion are few and difficult to obtain. How many children are compromised?”
“Hundreds.”
She scoffs and waves a hand in the air as if the mere idea she could make enough is ridiculous. “We believe they are being kept together in tents on Stygarde grounds. A brave shade has agreed to sneak it in and add it to the drinking water.”
Her eyes narrow. “If that’s the case, you’ll need it to be concentrated to achieve the correct dosage.”
I nod. “Enough for ten large barrels of drinking water. Teach me what I need to do. I’ll help you make it.”
Her eyes drift toward the ceiling. “It’s possible in theory, but I’ll have to check my stores.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I release a deep sigh as she hustles out the door, leaving me to watch the crackling fire.
When the door opens again a second later, it’s not Catarina standing there. Damien’s sister, Karyl, lets herself in, a wide grin spreading across her face. “Eloise!”