Chapter Thirty-Seven
We stand on the hillside sloping up to the tree, amid the stones and ferns and massive roots.
The great branches of the Dwirra spread above, and the curtain of willow-like limbs form the outer wall of Elfhame behind us.
This is the backside of the tree, with its hill between us and the houses of the fae; I cannot even see Morgaine’s white palace.
We are very much alone, but I’m not sure how long that will last, if the queen might have some way of knowing we slipped in through her walls.
“Stay low,” I tell Sylvie and the MacDougals. “We mustn’t be seen.”
“What is this place?” Sylvie asks, holding tight to Captain’s collar.
Just then, a trio of fae go running past us.
We duck quickly behind a mossy stone, listening to them chitter and whisper; they seem to be inspecting the perimeter.
Captain’s hackles rise, and I hold his muzzle shut to keep him from barking and giving us away.
After a few minutes, they vanish around the other brow of the hills.
“Oh,” Sylvie breathes. “It’s their world.”
“We’d have been better off in the house,” Mrs. MacDougal mutters.
“What, with that madcap loon chopping us up with his sword?” retorts her husband.
But maybe Mrs. MacDougal is right.
Elfhame is crumbling.
I can tell that much with hardly a glance.
Ruin is a stench on the air, the smell of the tree’s bleeding sap as rancid as that of decaying flesh.
It runs down the trunk and drips from the branches in sticky, scarlet vines.
Given the tree’s humanlike shape, the sight is horrifying, like seeing a woman stuck full of arrows, blood running in rivers down her skin.
Loud groans and creaks from the wood remind me of Ravensgate after Sylvie put out the fire, when the whole structure was swaying and breaking apart bit by bit, on the verge of total collapse.
The hill trembles beneath my knees, and leaves rain from the Dwirra’s crown, velveting the ground in sheets of scarlet.
Along the trunk and branches, lines of black spread like poisoned veins.
All this, from one small clipped branch?
I remember the horror in Morgaine’s eyes when I had told her what Lachlan had sent me here to fetch. She’d known, of course, of her kingdom’s great weakness. Conrad had not; I wonder how many fae even knew. I cannot fault Morgaine for keeping it secret.
“Stay here, and keep out of sight,” I tell the others. “Hold tight to the dog. Conrad is here somewhere, and he will know what to do.”
“Connie is here?” Sylvie whispers, her eyes round.
I look at her, my heart suddenly splintering as I realize this is the last moment I will ever have with her.
On an impulse, I pull her into a tight embrace and whisper in her ear one final lesson, “Hold fast to your power, Sylvie, and to your freedom. Do not ever bargain these things away. Do not ever compromise who you are. And know that no matter what, you are loved.”
When I pull away, her eyes are full of confused tears, but she nods slowly.
“Take this, Rose.” She pulls a long knitting needle out of her sleeve and presses it into my hand. It is as long as my forearm and made of polished iron. “Every hero needs a sword.”
“You are absolutely right.” I take it and kiss the top of her head.
Mrs. MacDougal takes the girl’s hand. “Go on, Miss Pryor. Hurry.”
I nod, grateful to her, and limp around the stone.
Keeping one hand clenched to my aching chest, I make my way as quickly as I can over the loose leaves and veining roots, which is not very quick at all.
I glance back just once, to see Sylvie has another knitting needle, and she raises it in salute as if it were Excalibur itself.
I raise mine in return, holding back a sob.
I must force myself to turn and keep going.
Once I’m out of sight of the others, I stop to lean on a stone and fight away the black spots clouding my vision.
Sweat soaks my dress and hair, and my skin is feverishly hot.
The world seems to reel around me, and I groan and shut my eyes, waiting for the dizziness to pass.
I remember with sudden sharpness the last moments of my uncle’s life, when he lay gasping on his deathbed, delirious and trembling.
I feel that way now, as if I am fading from the world, becoming as thin and transparent as a sheet of vellum.
With barely the strength to keep standing, I wonder why I don’t just lie down in the soft moss and let it end.
I got them here, didn’t I? What more can I possibly do for anyone?
But Conrad is still here, and if the fae caught him after he smashed the portal glass, then he is surely in danger. Perhaps I can convince Morgaine . . .
Of what?
I have nothing left to bargain. Not even my life is worth a thimble anymore.
But I must keep moving. Though I feel the chill of the Fates’ shears closing on my neck, I must keep moving.
Pushing off the rock, I stumble onward, up the hill toward the Tree.
I will have a good vantage point from there, at least. But soon my legs give out, and I have to crawl on hands and knees over moss and stone, stopping every few minutes to let out a sob of pain and clench the earth until I find a scrap of strength to propel me a few more yards.
I leave in my wake a trail of thread and scraps of burned silk and chiffon, my battered, singed, and muddy gown unraveling with me.
My hair hangs in ragged curls, plastered to my neck. There is black soot beneath my nails.
Still I drag myself on. And strangely, with Elfhame crumbling around me, my heart withering, and everyone I’ve come to love in mortal danger, I catch myself staring, enchanted, at the most improbable little things: a small five-petaled flower rooted in the crack in a stone.
A bank of perfectly smooth moss. A fragile, pale fiddlehead uncurling from the center of a fern.
Small and ordinary wonders I might have passed a thousand times in a day without ever noticing them, and now they seem indescribably beautiful.
Bitter tears burn on my cheeks, and I crawl onward and upward.
At the top of the hill, I reach out and rest my hand on the Dwirra trunk.
The bark is as feverish as I am. For too long a moment, I rest there, feeling a sudden and mighty kinship with the ancient tree.
I look up and see the great carved face, and it’s as though those blank eyes were looking back at me.
“You and I,” I whisper, my breath a tremble on my lips. “He’s done for us both, hasn’t he?”
Dragging myself to my feet, I lean heavily on the tree and make my way around it, feeling like I’m circling a village wall, its girth is so great.
Sticky red sap rolls down the white bark and pools between the roots, smelling of honey mixed with blood.
The Dwirra’s heavy branches droop to the ground like tired limbs; it seems that at any moment the entire thing will simply slump over.
As I approach the side of the tree which faces the enclave and the white palace far across the way, I begin to see more of the fae scurrying below, clearly panicking. They run between their root-houses, some of which have already collapsed, piles of white, rotted wood stained with red sap.
There are two figures ahead of me on the hilltop, standing still at the Dwirra’s feet. I limp toward them, with no idea what I’ll say, but certain I’ll never reach Morgaine’s palace on my own.
Then I realize: I won’t have to.
Because it’s Morgaine I see ahead; I can tell by the spiky crown on her head. And with her, on his knees with his head hanging onto his bare chest, is Conrad.
He’s alive.
For a moment, that single thought outshines all others, and I stare at him and feel tears of relief run behind my tears of pain.
The nearer I creep, hidden by the buttress-like protrusions around the trunk, the more I see the horror of his predicament.
A thick silver chain is bound around his wrists, tethering him to a stake driven into the dirt.
Spiderwebs cling to his hair and skin, spun between him and the Dwirra.
They glisten silver, a vast, delicate net.
He wears only his trousers, and all across his bare shoulders and back, sweat glistens.
His eyes are shut, but he seems conscious, for he flinches periodically and his lips peel back in grimaces of pain.
What in the names of the Fates is this?
Some sort of ritual?
Then I see the light tracing the spiderwebs, so thin and faint that at first it seems a trick of my eyes.
But then I realize, with a twist of horror, that she is draining him, feeding his living energy into the spells she’s strung up around him.
I study them closer and see familiar patterns intertwining with ones I don’t recognize: sustaining spells, healing charms. And they all twine over a certain section of bark, enough web to form a silken mesh over an ugly gash in the tree, where the wood is blackened and greenish, as if infected.
This must be where Conrad cut the branch, the same branch I destroyed in my disastrously ineffective attempt to thwart Lachlan.
She’s trying to mend the Dwirra.
And she’s killing Conrad to do it.
“No!” I cry, but what I’d intended as a shout comes out as a broken sob. I don’t have the strength to reach him, and crumple to my knees halfway there.
But they hear me and look up, Conrad’s face taut with pain, but his eyes growing wider at the sight of me.
“R-Rose? What are you—? How did—?”
“Let him go!” I raise the knitting needle Sylvie gave me, wishing it really were a sword.
“She must have threadwalked here, like a moorwitch of old,” Morgaine says, looking at me with an odd expression and ignoring the pitiful weapon in my hand.
“A power I thought long lost. But if the girl could threadwalk into Elfhame, then that means the Dwirra’s protective perimeter has failed. My brother will be here soon.”