Chapter Five
Three days later, after spending far too much time cramped in a coach with nothing to do but embroider spells, I find myself on the moors of Scotland, a north wind dragging at my hair.
Before me slumps the ruined remains of some ancient castle, green with moss.
The road ends here, a narrow track overgrown with weeds.
Lachlan’s procession of coaches, carts, and wagons is still trickling in, and fae emerge from them blinking and stretching and shaking themselves.
I am the only mortal in the company, a fact I have felt keenly every moment, like a mouse among wolves.
With the exception of the castle, the landscape is empty to the horizon. A few stalwart copses of yew and ash twist here and there, but by and large, all is dismal gray. Snow spreads in a scant layer, broken by jagged twists of heather and grass that bristle over the hills.
“The last functioning doorway to the world of the fae is . . . here, in the middle of all this nothing?” I ask.
Lachlan’s whisper in my ear makes me jump; I had not heard him step close. “Only a fool looks at this place and sees nothing. You are no fool. Look again.”
I sigh at him, but when he walks away, I squint and study the ruins.
The castle is in dreadful condition, a remnant of the Middle Ages, scored by age and weather.
Stone walls sag and crack, and moss has so overgrown it that entire portions have been swallowed entirely, giving the structure the appearance of a ship sinking into the mire.
On the northern wall of what must have once been the great main chamber, the outlines of arched windows remain.
Everything is soaked through; rain battered our line of coaches the length of the journey from London, and I’d been looking forward to a bit of warmth and dryness.
No such luck, me. Even the stones squelch.
“Wait a moment . . .” I go to the nearest wall and trace a pattern carved into the stone, so worn away by time only parts of it are still visible. But I recognize them all the same. “It’s knotwork.”
“Moorwitch knotwork,” says Lachlan. “This castle was built by the very first Weavers in Britain.”
“Oh,” I breathe, looking around with heightened interest. I think of a leather-bound book musty with age, its yellowed pages crinkling under my hands and whispering ancient, forbidden magic; a spell to summon immortals.
The famous moorwitches’ power exceeded anything the Order of the Moirai can Weave nowadays, if the old stories are true.
It was the moorwitches who repelled the Romans in their first invasion, and after them, the fierce Norsemen.
But not long later, they vanished entirely and without explanation, taking with them a wealth of Weaving knowledge and history.
The Order rose to power after that, taking over all magical affairs, and the moorwitches faded into myth.
While I explore the place, noting more instances of old carved spells, Lachlan’s faerie troupe set about erecting canvas tents in the heart of the ruins.
They abandoned their human glamours the second day into our journey, when we’d left behind the Great North Road with all its bustle and turned onto the narrow, overgrown track which had taken us through wilder and wilder countryside and eventually led us here.
Though they dress in human garb, the other fae are somehow less human than Lachlan, their ears more sharply pointed, their limbs longer and gaits more loping.
They move as I’d imagine uprooted trees might, swaying a great deal.
Their eyes are large and luminous like cats’ eyes, but nearly entirely blackened by their pupils.
I think Lachlan is something different than they are, some other sort of faerie, but I cannot begin to imagine what.
I haven’t yet worked up the nerve to ask.
“Where is the doorway to Elfhame?” I ask Lachlan. “I’ve searched the entire ruins and seen nothing.”
“If only it were as simple as that,” he says. “No, this is merely to be our camp for the next few weeks. Now come, and I will show you where the doorway stands.”
Well, a walk will do me good after three days cramped in a coach, squeezed between two fae who hissed whenever I fidgeted too much. Securing my threadkit over my shoulder and my new bonnet atop my head, I nod.
Lachlan leads me down a stone stair of dubious integrity and then out of the ruins altogether, past the boundary wall that’s half sunk into the mud and moss.
Soon I am panting. “Is it far, this thing you want to show me?”
“Why? Are your feeble human legs—?”
“Call me feeble one more time, and I will walk back to London myself, vow be damned.”
He chuckles, which surprises me. It’s a human sound, and I wonder if it’s something he picked up in his centuries-long furlough in England. Or, rather, the “World Above,” as he calls it, often with a disdainful curl of his lip.
Lachlan wears a tailcoat and breeches still, but every day since London, he’s produced a bit more frill.
Lace at his cuffs and throat. Sapphires in his ears.
Gemstones appearing on his silver rings.
The others have adopted similar attire, with a particular penchant for the gaudy and bright.
They remind me of magpies, hoarding all things sparkly.
Only on Lachlan do these accoutrements actually look stylish.
He seems like the sort who might walk into a room wearing a ridiculous crystal-beaded cape, and a week later, every highborn young man in London would have one.
As I hasten to keep up with his long strides, I pinch myself to be sure I am here, with the silver faerie I summoned when I was a child, on a quest stolen straight out of a storybook, tramping over frozen heather.
Impulsive, I think. My second fault. Agreeing to mad things before I’ve half thought them through. Old Sister Elizabeth would be shaking her head at me now and saying that’s what comes from too many daydreams and not enough prayers.
Finally, pressing a hand to a stitch in my side, I catch up with Lachlan atop another hill. The ruins have grown small enough behind us that I can hide it behind the pad of my thumb.
But it is forward I now look, and I let a long, frosty breath curl from my lips.
There is civilization here, after all: a little village tucked into the moors, quaint as a picture.
Whitewashed cob houses with smoking chimneys, a square lined with shops, pens bustling with sheep.
I spy a few people moving about, no more than specks at this distance.
The land between us and the village sweeps away at a slope; we are quite high above it, with a panoramic view of the moors on either side.
North of the village spreads a forest, trees flowing around the bare hilltops and rock crags like a dark river.
“Blackswire,” says Lachlan. “A place of no note whatsoever, excepting that somewhere near it, the last door to Elfhame stands.”
“It’s so common.”
“Appearances are deceiving,” says Lachlan. “For example, one might look at you and see only a poor charity-school teacher.”
I glance at him, my lips tightening. “I am not ashamed of my position, Sir Faerie.”
“But I look at you,” he goes on, “and I see a woman who ought to be Weaving charmed lace for queens and battle cloaks for kings. As you shall, once your debt to me has been paid. The world is about to change in mighty ways, and Weavers of great skill will be needed as never before.”
Though I can’t fathom what he means by that, my cheeks warm a little.
I have no desire to Weave royal lace or battle cloaks.
I love teaching, and I love my students.
Not that I expect him to understand that.
And I do not love the way he looks at me down the length of his nose, as if I am a pet whose leash he is proud to hold.
To change the subject, I ask, “This is where the moorwitches were from, then?”
“Aye, many were from this region, and many came to it, for this is where they passed in and out of Elfhame to learn their craft. There were once doors to the World Below open all across these moors. Only one now remains functional.”
“Were you there then, during the time of the moorwitches?” I stare at him, suddenly wondering how grossly I’ve underestimated his age.
After our travels, I’d begun to almost see him as human, or at least, not very inhuman.
But that sense of familiarity evaporates, leaving me feeling small and uncertain beside his vast history and experience.
“I remember them,” he says. “Wild, fearless women hungry for magic, leading their tribes like wolves with their pack. They came to us with offerings, with carved stone, with bears’ teeth, with bronze amulets and rare jewels, to pay for the knowledge we imparted.”
“What went wrong between your people and mine?” I ask. “Why did we stop visiting Elfhame and learning magic from the fae?”
The old stories I grew up hearing never spoke of this. The fae were rumored to have once walked our lands and shared their knowledge of magic with mortals, but the details of their vanishing are vague. The immortal folk seem to have faded like old ink into the pages of history.
He shifts, his gaze wandering. “Your world began to change, and my people would not change with it. The moorwitches faded into history, and a new breed of humans arose—ones who loved order and iron and their foreign gods, and there was not room for us. So we diminished and withdrew into the World Below.” His lip curls. “Like rats in a warren.”
I wait, but he seems determined to say nothing more on the matter. “So, where is the doorway, then?”
“Alas, I cannot take you any closer than this.”
He lifts a hand and prods the air, and a ripple of sparking light spreads at his touch. The glow shimmers across the hilltop into the sky before fading again, with a soft sound like glass wind chimes. Lachlan inhales sharply, withdrawing his hand, his fingertip smoking slightly.
“A ward,” I breathe. “I’ve never seen one so large before. It must be enormous.”
“It surrounds the village, the countryside around it, and a few nearby estates. Several hundred thousand acres all told.”
My hand goes to my threadkit.
“I could not undo such a ward from the outside,” I say slowly. “My skills—”
“You needn’t undo it, Rose. At least, not yet. The ward is not for you.”
Before I can stop him, he grabs my wrist and lifts my hand toward the ward. I brace myself, stomach clenching as I expect the sharp sting—but it never comes. My hand passes easily through the air which denied his a moment ago.
“It’s only for fae,” he says.
I snatch my hand from his, rubbing my wrist where I can still feel the icy sting of his fingertips. “I don’t understand. If it is meant to guard the doorway, why keep out your own kind?”
His blue eyes glitter coldly at the rooftops of Blackswire. “As I told you before, not everyone in Elfhame would welcome my return.” He turns to look at me, his gaze softening. “Truly, I only wish to go home. I am weary and fading in this iron world.”
I stare at him as the wind rises over the moors and sweeps at my skirts. “Why did you leave?”
He ignores my query. “I’ll tell you where to find the door, but it will likely be hidden behind layers of spellwork.
You will also be required to find the spell to unlock it.
In the meantime, you will report back to me every three days.
I want to know who you’ve spoken to, where you’ve gone, what you’ve seen. ”
“Oh, is that all? You aren’t interested in what I had for breakfast or how many times I pricked my thumb with my needle? And how am I to return to you every three days, on foot? Blackswire is at least a two-hour walk from here.”
“Ah.” He gives me a sly smile. “That is where the Telarii shall aid us, though it cost me your weight in gold. Come, little witch, and I will show you grand magic indeed.”