Chapter Thirty-Four
I cannot Weave another portal knot, for my threadkit is still in Elfhame. And even if I could, I know it would not work. Conrad broke the portal glass, the anchor to the standing stones, so that Morgaine could not follow me, and so that I could not return for him.
The way is entirely shut.
Conrad could not have issued a more final farewell.
I let out a scream of anger and splitting, searing sorrow, on my hands and knees on the damp earth, my fingers driving into the dirt.
The wind tears through the clearing, disturbing the once sacred quiet of this place, driving home the knowledge that the connection between these stones and Elfhame is shattered. They are only rocks now.
A glint in the grass reveals one triangular shard of the portal glass which somehow followed me through.
I pick it up and stare at it venomously, as if all of this were its fault.
The glass reveals no image of Conrad or Elfhame, only a twisting, vague mass of threads—the strange place the Telarian tapestry led me through, I realize, when I traveled to and from Lachlan’s camp.
The raw warp and weft of the tapestry of the world.
Finally, I put the shard in my pocket, as if somehow it might still help me reach Conrad. It is the only tie I have to Elfhame, now.
That, and the Dwirra branch.
I look at it sourly, the pale bark and dark-red leaves hateful to my eyes. It seems such a paltry thing to have cost so much.
After a few minutes, I force myself upright and into the trees, clutching the branch with all my strength. If I get it to Lachlan in time, perhaps he can somehow reach Elfhame and overthrow Morgaine before she can harm Conrad.
It seems a desperate fool’s hope, but without it I do not think I could stand.
I’m still barefoot, stepping painfully over rocks and roots, but I push myself anyway, until I find Bell among the trees, where Conrad said he would be.
The horse is so tall I must lead him to a rock so that I can climb atop it and then onto his back.
I give him his head and whisper encouragement in his ear; he takes off at a trot, picking up the pace once we leave the wood.
The night sky festers with fitful clouds. They roll and boil across the stars, swallowing the moon whole. A black wind rushes over the moor, and on it I smell smoke.
My stomach twists with foreboding.
“Faster, Bell,” I say.
I see the fire a full minute before I realize it is Ravensgate I am looking at.
The manor is ablaze, orange and angry beneath the brooding storm clouds. Horror opens like a pit in my stomach, and I dig my heels into Bell’s sides. He throws his head forward and gallops hard, sweat hot on his withers.
I slide off before he comes to a full stop and sprint to the house. About a third of it is on fire—the wing where Sylvie and the MacDougals sleep. There is no sign of anyone outside, which means they may still be within.
Throwing open the door, I stumble back as a wall of black smoke rolls out. Then, coughing and gasping, I hold my skirt over my nose and plunge into the manor.
The grand foyer is aglow with flames; they eat the drapes and gnaw on the banister and have completely filled the passage to the kitchen. The roar of the blaze drowns out my shouts for Sylvie and Mrs. MacDougal. The floorboards are hot under my bare feet.
Charging up the stairs, I come to the MacDougals’ room first and pound on the door. When no one replies, I wrap my skirt around the hot handle and open it.
The old couple is still asleep; a muffling charm is hung on the door, pale threads wound across a thin hoop, as I’d suspected one must be when I’d tried to escape Conrad’s entrapment spell earlier. I wrench it down and tear it apart.
“Wake up!” I shout.
Their eyes are only starting to blink open as I run out of the room again, then up the stairs to the floor where Sylvie sleeps.
The flames are thicker here, and I push through a corridor lined with them, dizzy from the heat and smoke.
I cannot shout for Sylvie; I can barely breathe.
Even if I had all the thread in the world, I could not put out this fire.
It would take twenty Weavers together to have a hope.
When I reach her room, I open the door only to see a torrent of flames rushing out. I leap back with a dry gasp.
I’m too late.
Her entire room is filled with fire.
For a moment I stand frozen in place, my mind utterly blank with horror. All I can think of is Conrad, begging me through the portal glass: Promise me, Rose. Please!
Something grabs my skirt, and I shout, turning, ready to bludgeon whoever it is.
But then I see a familiar furry face, and I let out a sob and reach for him. “Captain! Come!”
He evades my hand and instead tugs at my hem with his teeth.
“What is it, boy?”
With a bark, he turns and bounds away.
“No!” I shout. “Come back!”
I run after him, determined to carry him over my shoulder if I must. He barks again, his hackles raised high, then darts through an open door leading to the attic.
Cursing and teary, I follow him up. The air is choked with smoke, but I look back and see the flames pursuing me with ravenous hunger. I cannot go back down.
So I climb, coughing and dizzy. At the top, I stumble to a halt, and stare.
Sylvie stands in the center of the attic, her back to me, before the great ward loom. Fire licks the frame, and the corners of the tapestry begin to wither and blacken. Captain lies at Sylvie’s feet and whines.
“Sylvie!” I rasp, lunging for her.
Grabbing her arm, I turn her around and find her gazing blankly at me. But her hands are moving, tying a fire knot.
I knock the thread from her fingers, horrified.
“You did this?” My voice is a croak in my throat.
I shake her by her shoulders but get no response. It’s as if she cannot see me at all. Otherwise, she seems unharmed save for the singe marks on her nightgown and soot smeared on her skin.
The flames on the loom leap up suddenly, catching the tapestry. I pull Sylvie back, eyes wide as the beautiful ward spell begins to shrivel and flake to ash. Captain growls and retreats, staying between us and the flames.
Dreadful understanding bursts in my mind.
Pulling the girl to the window, I knock out the glass with my elbow and give us a thin flow of fresh air. I turn Sylvie around, looking over every inch of her, then my gaze settles on her thick dark hair.
“Oh, Sylvie,” I whisper.
I run my fingers through her locks and find them—tiny, subtle knots tied in the fine hairs at her nape, nearly imperceptible. There are dozens of them—the same knots woven over and over again.
Puppetry spells.
They’re illegal, and extremely difficult to Weave.
But I know Lachlan is likely more than up to the job.
He must have the mirror versions of these knots tied up somewhere, waiting to be thrummed to life and then manipulated, triggering Sylvie to carry out the task he would have whispered in her ear, planted in her brain like a poisonous seed while serving her tea and strawberries.
The moment Conrad put the branch in my hands, Lachlan would have activated them, setting her to her terrible task of destroying the warding tapestry and Ravensgate with it.
I curse myself for not finding the knots sooner. I’d searched Sylvie’s dress that day, but not her hair. Stupid! It is the same sort of trick Conrad once suspected me of. I should have seen it.
There is no time to undo each knot one by one, nor to wait for their magic to burn her hair to ashes.
Already Sylvie has produced another thread from somewhere and is trying to tie another fire knot.
I wrench it away, then plunge my hand into my pocket, nearly cutting my palm on the shard of the portal glass as I pull it out.
“I’m sorry, Sylvie,” I whisper.
I slice the shard roughly through her hair, sawing it off at her jawline, cutting through the awful puppetry knots.
The moment they fall away, Sylvie starts, blinking and looking around. Then she grabs hold of me, eyes wild.
“I didn’t mean to!” she cries. “I couldn’t stop myself! It’s like I was trapped in my own head!”
“I know,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around her. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”
But she isn’t. None of us are. The manor is on fire, and we’re trapped up here with no way down. The window is too small for even Sylvie to squeeze out, even if I could manage to Weave some spell to slow her descent to a survivable speed.
Through the window, I see the MacDougals standing in the drive, clinging to one another, Mrs. MacDougal sobbing. I wave but cannot catch their attention.
Turning back to Sylvie, I hold her shoulders and look her in the eyes.
“Is there any other way out of the attic?”
She shakes her head, pale as a ghost. “I don’t know.”
“Sylvie, think.”
She begins to cry.
“Do you have more thread, then?”
She nods and pulls a strand from her pocket, pushing it into my palm.
It’s pitifully short. I look at the sea silk tied to my wrist and know it’s pointless.
I don’t have enough to get us out of here, and it would take too long to unravel our clothes or Weave hair, even with the mass of Sylvie’s dark locks on the floor.
But I Weave the thread Sylvie gave me anyway, and a simple wind charm is all I can manage to get out of it. A gust blows through the window and out again, clearing the smoke just enough for us to catch our breaths.
The fire has spread from the loom on one side of us and spilled from the stairway on the other.
We’re trapped between two walls of flame that are closing in.
I look at the sea silk and wonder if there is enough to Weave a heart-stopping spell, to end it quickly and save us both from the pain of the fire.
But just as I begin to untie it from my wrist, Sylvie pulls back.
“I can stop it,” she whispers.
“You don’t have thread.”
“I tried to tell you before,” she replies. “I don’t need thread.”
She begins to channel, her eyes shut, hands in fists. I shout and reach for her.
“You’ll burst your heart!” I say, though I’d been about to Weave a spell to do just that. “Sylvie—”
“I can stop it,” she says through her teeth.
The walls, ceiling, and floor groan around us.
The flames flicker and warp. The world seems to twist around Sylvie as she wrenches energy from it, wrings it from every leaf and branch around.
I feel behind me and find the Dwirra branch stuck through my sash has gone brittle and dry, its life force sucked out of it.
With a cry, Sylvie throws her arms wide and opens her eyes.
I watch in shock as her pupils turn silver, the tips of her ears stretch into graceful points, and the very bones in her face sharpen and grow longer, her body transforming before me. It reminds me of a glamour spell fading away, revealing a true form, but this is a different magic altogether.
I remember at once a dozen whispers, a score of subtle hints: Sylvie’s way with animals, her astonishing power, Conrad’s mistrust of her magic, Mrs. MacDougal’s mention of Liam North’s faerie paramour.
My father, Conrad had said, in those last, awful moments I was with him, I think he loved her.
Sylvie’s ghost, her silent watcher, glinting like silver mist in the trees.
I look at Sylvie’s black hair and emerald irises, and I know then who she is.
All around us, the flames begin to wither and shrink, reduced by Sylvie’s strange, threadless magic until they are nothing but smoldering ash and plumes of thick, dark smoke.
I have no idea how she is doing it, but I know I’ve seen this type of spellwork before, woven by Lachlan when he’d warmed me on the cold night of Lorellan’s funeral.
I can only watch as the girl channels by some instinct deep within her, beyond my ken.
Then, spent, Sylvie pitches into me with a soft cry.
I catch her, as silence falls over the manor. The blaze is out, leaving smoke thick enough to kill us still.
So I lift Morgaine’s daughter in my arms and carry her, pressing her face into my shoulder so she doesn’t inhale too much smoke, and holding my breath as long as I can until we reach the front foyer, where it is a little thinner. Captain races ahead of us, barking.
Finally I push through the half-gaping front doors and stumble into the drive, falling hard onto my knees and gasping for air. Sylvie rolls from my weakened arms, coughing and choking, looking herself again, but for the still slightly pointed tips of her ears.
It is only after several minutes of coughing and wiping tears from my burning eyes that I look up.
And see Lachlan and all his fae standing in the drive, watching us.
On the Briar King’s brow rests a crown of silver thorns.