52. Fifty-two
Chapter 52
We stood at the edge of the woods, on the bank of a wide, flat river. The water ran so clear I fancied I could see each individual stone at the bottom.
Karema crouched on the ground in front of us. She carefully untied the twine wrapped around a woven cloth bundle, then unfolded its edges. The rest of her group stood a short distance away, tents and belongings packed on their horses.
“Here. If it’s my brother you’re going after…” She said brother with a strange, disbelieving texture. Karema straightened with two of the twine-and-clay necklaces in her hands. These each had just one disk.
“Your protection?” I asked wonderingly. I ran a hand over the smooth clay surface of mine. I didn’t feel anything from it. If anything, it seemed to push against me, cold to the touch. I drew my hand back from the clay and held only the twine. That was more comfortable.
“Yes,” Karema said gruffly. “ These ones will keep your mind your own. You can still be killed or trapped in any number of horrible ways, but you won’t meet my mother’s fate. Not so long as those remain around your neck.”
“A precious thing, then,” Oraik said. Seemingly unable to resist a joke about his desirability, he grinned and added: “for myself, and the rest of the world.” He quickly drew the twine over his head one-handed, cupping Bird in his other palm. The wooden creature had been silent all night and day, which I took for a good thing. I’d tried explaining to it that we hadn’t wanted Karema, we’d wanted Kalcedon, no matter how similar their blood seemed. It had not responded. Now and then it turned its head or rearranged its wings.
“How does it work?” I asked Karema. There had to be sigils somewhere, but I couldn’t see any on either side of the disk. They must have been inside it, like the Ward-stones.
“Do I look like a witch? All I know is, they work.”
“How’d you get them?” I asked. “Are there witches among your people, then? Practicing ones?”
“Some, but this is a skill beyond. Tarelay made these for us.”
My eyes bulged. The first words out of my mouth came out as unintelligible stutters, until I finally got a hold of myself.
“Tarelay? Did you say Tarelay? The same Tarelay Sorrowsworn who built the Ward?”
Karema pursed her lips at me. She didn’t seem to share my excitement.
“Yes. Try not to break those. I want them back, if by some miracle you survive.”
“He’s still alive, then? Do you know him? Could I meet him?” I had so many questions. My heart was in my throat.
“I haven’t seen him in nearly three years. He comes and goes.”
“What’s he like? Does he ever—”
Oraik elbowed me. Karema kept talking.
“Anyways, cross the river. An hour’s walk or so, due north, and you should be able to spot it. From a distance the palace just looks like part of the mountains. Look for where it gleams silver. When you get close enough, you’ll see the door. But listen: do not pass through the first entrance you see.”
“Why not?” Oraik said. “Is it a trick door?”
“It’s the main hall,” Karema said. “Faerie magic; it doesn’t matter where you walk up to the palace, the front door will be just there. But if you turn right and walk a hundred paces, you’ll find the servant’s entry. That’ll be less risky. They expect humans to come and go from there, anyways.”
She raised a fist to her forehead. I suppose it was some outland farewell we weren’t familiar with. I waved. Oraik of course insisted on a hug, which Karema didn’t seem to like.
She and her band watched us wade through the river. Even at its deepest point, the water barely came past my knees.
At the far bank we turned and watched the band vanish into the woods. The two sides of the river were different as night and day. Where we’d come from the forest was a thick tangle, but here the ground was arid, nearly barren, with rocks and thin shrubs. It seemed an odd place for a Lord to make his home. I remembered how the flowers wilted when I made Bird and wondered if somehow, he had drained the earth itself.
“Should we leave our things?” I asked Oraik.
He agreed, reluctantly. We found a cluster of rocks and hid our belongings. Oraik tucked the knife into his pocket first. Bird whistled softly, and we turned towards our goal.
“Is this it, then?” I asked the enchantment. “They were right, and Kalcedon is this way?”
Bird whistled again. We would have to hope my spell was a good one, and that we weren’t walking into a hornet’s nest without reason.
We could see the mountains already, though from here the silver veining of the palace was not visible. The bare stone cliffs looked indistinguishable from each other. In silence, we passed the occasional odd spray of heatless purple flowers growing from the dry earth. Walking through such open ground made me nervous; I wished I could cast a concealment spell or carry a shield. But while there was weak power in the air, I now knew that carrying an enchantment too long could be tiring. I wanted to be fresh when we reached the palace. Besides, Karema had not counseled us to hide our approach.
“We should have asked for horses,” Oraik complained. “I’ve never walked so much in my life.”
“Do you even know how to ride one?”
“I could figure it out,” he told me confidently. I shook my head.
The distribution of magic was strange here. The ground we crossed got colder as we went, for a time. At last we could see the silver shine of the palace up ahead of us, a narrow section of the mountain that seemed to glow. After that, with every step the magic got denser again, until it felt even hotter than my first steps past the Ward. Nervously, I wondered if it meant there were a lot of faeries inside the mountain’s walls.
We walked closer. Suddenly what we were looking at changed . The landscape melted to a different form right before my eyes.
A great pair of silver doors three times my height appeared. Their metal surface was sculpted in high relief. A carved figure knelt on each side of the grand double-doors, heads bowed with mourning shrouds covering their faces. Behind them a carving of a barren tree twisted up past the edges of the door, sprawling branches intertwined with stars. A crescent moon framed either side of the tree.
And out of the ground on either side of the door, made of wood and not worked metal, grew two large, barren trees, their branches silver-gray and knotted.
Bird whistled low.
Oraik stared with his mouth open. I didn’t think the front door was a good place to linger. I grabbed his arm and dragged him quickly to the side, behind one of the big trees.
“I’m going to cast a concealment,” I whispered.
“It’ll keep people from seeing us?”
“We won’t be invisible,” I cautioned. I didn’t even begin to know how to accomplish that feat. “But if nobody looks for us, and we don’t draw attention, we’ll be… looked over, you could say. So be careful. And don’t be loud.”
“Alright. So we find Kalcedon, grab Kalcedon, and leave with Kalcedon. Easy enough.”
If only , I thought with a shake of my head. I wished I could share Oraik’s optimism instead of only my grim-won determination to see this through. I figured it was a good idea to give the concealment a little something extra; certainly, there was enough power to spare. I added a basic shield to protect us from attacks, and then a phrase to heighten our senses ever so slightly. The problem was it was a lot to hold onto at once.
“Lead the way. Keep a sharp eye,” I told Oraik.
We started to walk. I tried to keep count of my paces, though we’d already stepped to the side to get away from the front door. At ninety-four, which should have been about right, a smaller door appeared. It was an arch of wood a few inches shorter than Oraik. Nothing like the splendor of the silver entry.
He looked at me to confirm, one hand reaching towards the knob. The other still held Bird. I nodded, and Oraik ducked inside. I stepped in behind him.
In front of us lay a long, thin hallway. The silver gleam of the walls was broken by thin living beams of wood that arched up to a pointed ceiling, which was half obscured by dying leaves. To the left was a narrow spiral staircase, its ceiling low, that went both up and down.
The stairs weren’t pretty like the hall in front of us. I could only presume it was meant for servants, like the door we’d entered through.
“Sounds like a kick,” Oraik breathed. Music drifted towards us down the long hallway, harps and bells and pipes. Every quiet beat between notes was full of laughter.
“Maybe he’d be in a dungeon?” I whispered back, eying the stairwell. Oraik nodded. We both stepped towards it.
Bird whistled loudly and snapped opened its wings. I froze in terror.
“Shh,” Oraik whispered, cupping his other hand over it. “No screaming, little thing.” The bird squirmed under his hand and shoved its head free.
The concealment spell was far from perfect, and the whistle had sounded so loud to my ears. But then, my senses were amplified, and the music was blaring. I heard no pause in its tune, saw no movement down the hall.
“If you must warn us,” Oraik whispered quietly, “warn us softly. Alright?”
“Not downstairs, then?” I whispered. My voice trembled. “Down the hall?”
Bird’s head bobbed. If I ever cast an animation spell like that again, I would have to remember to give the poor thing common sense.
“Well?” Oraik asked softly.
“On we go,” I whispered. In my head I reviewed fighting spells, thinking about which would be fastest, which could harm a whole crowd, which could be done stealthily. I’d have to drop the concealment to do it, so I wouldn’t have time to think then.
“I wonder what a faerie kick is like,” Oraik murmured. We stepped into the hall as softly as we could.
“Hush,” I told him. The noise of the music grew as we went. Here and there sudden doors appeared in the hall, ones I was sure had not been there before. At the side of each one we paused, waited for a breath, and slipped swiftly past.
Then suddenly we reached a juncture in the hall. It appeared just like the doors, an arched opening to the right that hadn’t been there a moment ago. The music was louder now, so loud I could barely think. We pressed ourselves against the wall beside the archway.
Suddenly the music stopped. Certain we’d been noticed, I dropped the concealment spell and sketched sigils that would bring destruction. I didn’t let them go yet. We didn’t know what was coming.
But no horde of faeries erupted from the wall’s opening. Instead, the music merely picked up again, to loud cheering and a tumbling cackle of laughter. I drew a shaky breath, dropped the weapon, and sketched out the concealment again.
Everything felt sharp around me, like I could taste my own terror and death on my tongue. The music was discordant and strange, the tune impossible to follow. I motioned to Oraik with my head. He nodded. I approached the opening and inched my face around the corner.
I half-expected to be seen instantly. Blessedly, the crowd in front of me was far too invested in their revelry to notice one mostly human woman poking around the lip of the wall. And truly, what lay before me was a sight to behold.
“Bird, stop,” I heard Oraik breathe behind me, his tone frustrated even though he was nearly silent.
We were at the edge of a great hall. The ceiling was so tall I fancied it might not exist at all. In the center of the room there was a truly massive, barren oak, its roots buried deep below the marble floor and its bark lined with veins of silver. From one of its branches grew a silver bird cage—not hung, grew ; it was part of the tree itself. A huge blue rock-thrush was inside the cage, its plumage the color of the stormy sea. But its magnificence was lost against the waves of finery below.
I couldn’t count how many faeries danced around the base of the tree. They came in various sizes and shapes, mostly humanoid but with strange features; some long-fingered, others winged; short and squat as barrels or taller than Oraik but thin as an oar pole. Some were feathered, others furred; some had hides as rough as bark. All were dressed in wonderous clothing. They wore ball gowns and billowing suits, caftans embroidered with threads that sparkled like stars, jewels on necks glinting with captured fire. I could have stared for hours and kept seeing more details. Horns and scales and tails and cleft hooves. Fangs. Antlers. Wings.
To the far right, a set of marble steps led to a single throne.
The male faerie seated there was tall and gray, his features uncomfortably familiar. He wore a crown of bone. His long hair, like spun silver, cascaded down his narrow shoulders.
Kalcedon lounged on the marble steps in front of him, a careless soft smile on his face. Gone was his worn shirt and mended trousers. He was dressed as fine as any of the dancers, with black breeches even darker than the night sky and a flowing moon-bright shirt whose billowing sleeves fastened closed at his wrists with pearls. Even his mess of dark hair seemed to shine, rippling like moon-touched waves.
“Bird, no !” Oraik hissed.
With a keening shriek, the wooden creature plunged past me. I grabbed for it and missed.
Bird careened into the room and collided with a startled fae female before crashing down to the floor. The crowd parted away from it. The rock thrush puffed out his feathers and regarded the unhappy creature with a tilt of his head.
Bird straightened and stumbled a step back. Against the crowd, the awkward wooden thing looked so small and pitiful. The song ended in bits and pieces, different instruments falling away one at a time until the room was silent.
The dancers turned to watch as Bird hopped forward. I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood. Voices whispered; faces craned.
I couldn’t undo this. I could hardly believe it was happening. But it was.
The Sorrowing Lord, his features inhuman and perfect, leaned forward on his throne, one delicate eyebrow raised.
“Run,” I whispered to Oraik. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
Bird whistled loudly and plunged forward. Spreading its lopsided wings, it wobbled the last few steps to Kalcedon. My half-faerie tilted his head to one side, a curious expression on his face. He reached a hand forward and touched Bird.
The moment Bird brushed against Kalcedon’s skin, it toppled over on its side. It was just wood again, its animating mission gone. Kalcedon lifted it slowly and turned it over in his hands. His face still looked empty. Flat.
“Run,” I told Oraik again, as I finally pulled away from the room. He hadn’t left like I’d told him to. He was beside me, watching the same scene I was with a horrified look on his face. I nudged him with my elbow, fingers still clenched in the spell. “Run, run .” He finally turned and we took off down the narrow hall.
Or, at least, we tried to.