Bones of Faerie03 - Faerie After (5 page)

Why would I want their control over me to slip? We kept walking, past Kate’s house and to the shed behind it with its recently repaired roof. I focused on keeping my steps quiet, on the way Nys’s fingers wrapped around mine, though my hand was dead once more. Something leaned against the shed, glinting in the moonlight. Kate’s mirror, the one she kept inside that shed so no one could use it. I wondered if Nys and Elin had moved it, and how they’d gotten past the guards my town now set at its borders, but those were distant thoughts, of less interest than the way Nys put his free hand to the glass and the way the glass parted at his touch. Faerie folk were hard enough for humans to hear.

“Follow him,” Elin whispered. “While you do, I shall have a talk with my mother.”

“Close your eyes.” Nys’s voice was as quiet as Elin’s, but harsher, catching on something inside me the way silk caught on work-worn hands. “I’ll not have you altering our destination, little seer.”

What destination? I shut my eyes, obeying the command, wanting to please Nys as dearly as I did Elin. He stepped forward, and I followed him. I felt glass part like water around me, felt water thicken into stone. Stone
pressed the air from my chest, and then I burst gasping into the open air. Warm wind caressed my face and neck. “You may open your eyes again,” Nys said.

A half-moon lit the clearing where we stood, just like the moon at home. But we weren’t home, and no clouds stopped this moon’s light from reflecting off the oblong of shining black stone that stood beside us, as tall and flat as Kate’s mirror and nearly as bright. Nys pulled me down onto a low bench, made of duller stone, to sit beside him. Bench and standing stone were surrounded by a ring of dead trees, little more than burned snags. I knew where we were, then: Faerie. I’d never been anywhere else with so many dead trees. The largest snag held a shadow that stretched beyond where the stump ended, branches grasping like arms at the sky, but all the others were as dead within as without. Dark ash littered the ground, and the air held a faint stale scent, a troubling scent.

Nys turned my head toward him. “So you’re Liza.” He took my hand in his again. His fingers ran over the stone, and I felt their touch deep within it. Thoughts of why the stale scent should concern me faded. I leaned toward Nys, reaching for his face with my good hand. Beneath the fall of loose hair, his skin felt rough and furrowed.

Nys pushed me away. “I am past playing games with
humans, save when it serves some greater purpose. This glamour is a tool for holding you here, nothing more. Elin wishes to bring her mother home and believes your presence the most effective way to compel her to come. She thinks Karinna might know some way we do not to slow the Realm’s steady crumbling, and so I have pledged my support. You made it easy for us, sleeping by the door. We were prepared to work much harder to get to you. As it was, we needed only to locate the mirror, an easy enough task, if one that required some walking.”

Nys stroked my hand once more. It tingled with life. His fingers crept past the sensitive spot at my wrist to touch living skin. Something rose in me at that touch. I moved closer to him as his fingers strayed back to the stone, feeling his warm breath against my face. Again Nys pushed me away. What had I done to displease him so?

He dropped my hand and stood. The shining stone rippled, and Elin stepped through it. Karin followed, her hand on Elin’s arm, her stance watchful.

Allie followed Karin, fingers clutching the plant speaker’s sweater. “Of course I won’t leave you!” Allie cried. She fell silent as the warm wind blew her nightgown about her ankles. “Oh.” Allie bit her lip and looked around, as if taking the whole of ruined Faerie in.

I stood, too, reaching for Nys with my stone hand
as I sidled closer to him. Allie’s eyes went wide, but I couldn’t work out why, any more than I could work out the strange green tug I felt from where Karin stood.

“Where is Liza?” Karin drew away from Elin and reached for Allie, who took her hand.

“I’m here.” Surely Karin heard my steps and breath, just as always.

“Come to me, Liza.” Karin’s voice was tight. Angry, as I rarely heard it.

Nys took my stone hand back in his.
Yes. This
. “Can’t,” I told Karin, a little breathlessly.
Don’t want to
.

“Let Liza go.” Karin’s other hand was clenched at her side. “Release her from your glamour, and allow them both to return to their own world. Only then will we talk.”

“I think not.” Elin’s dress rippled where it brushed the ground, as if alive. Her magic was for weaving. “You refused to return to
this
world after the War that nearly destroyed us, for my sake or your people’s sake. If holding your student’s leash is all that prevents you from taking flight once more, I shall hold it.”

“I cannot stay here.” Karin held herself so stiffly, with none of her usual easy stillness. “Let them go, and then I will explain. If you acknowledge Liza is my student, you acknowledge, too, that she is not yours to hold.”

“There are greater bonds than that between student
and teacher.” Elin dropped to her knees, but her eyes remained defiant. “Such as the bond between the Realm’s own ruler and her people.” Nys knelt, too, pulling me to the ground beside him.

“The land is unraveling, and we have need of your knowledge and your power.” There was ice in Elin’s voice. “Does that not matter to you more than a couple of mere humans? Or do you care so little for your own true people that you would release your claim on us?”

“The land.” Karin held tight to Allie’s hand as she spoke. “You cannot imagine what the land says to me. It is worse, so much worse than before, when my mother yet lived and it was only the plants I heard. I cannot hold out for long. I thought I’d have more time. Daughter, please. Return with us to the human world and we will talk. You have my word.”

“No,” Elin said. “You will not choose humans over me, not this time. If you wish to speak, speak here.”

“I must know Liza is unharmed first.” There was something unsteady—something
wrong
—in Karin’s voice. “I cannot see her, as you well know. She must come to me.”

Karin had never asked for anything on account of her lost sight before, any more than I’d asked for anything on account of my dead hand.
Not dead
. Faintly I felt Nys’s fingers wrapped around mine. He looked at Elin.
Elin pressed her lips together and nodded. They both rose, and Nys released my hand. “Go to your teacher, Liza.”

I didn’t want to leave him, but I wanted less to disobey him. I walked to Karin’s side, saw fear in her silver eyes. I’d seen Karin concerned, cautious, but never afraid. “I’m all right. Truly.” I let her take my good hand in hers.

She pressed something into that hand. Seeds. The green tugging grew stronger, and I knew it for what it was: the call of seeds that wished to grow. For a moment more I longed to return to Nys’s side, but the seeds’ pull on me was stronger than Nys’s was. His glamour melted away like fog beneath sun.

My stomach churned as I clutched Karin’s hand. An instant before, I’d wanted nothing more than to touch Nys, to be near him. Now I was sharply aware my knife did not hang by my side, for if it did, I’d have plunged it through his heart. The things he’d made me feel, when he’d touched my hand—

I had no need of a knife to defend myself.
“Go away, Nys!”
I threw my summoning magic into that call.

Nys frowned, but he remained where he was, and I knew that wasn’t his full name. Karin and Caleb were the only faerie folk I’d met who gave their full names to humans, a sign of trust and respect I’d not understood at
first. Most faerie folk were cautious about sharing their true names with any but those nearest them, even among their own people.

I swallowed panic down like bitter willow bark. I dared not let the fear that followed glamour weaken me. I drew my hand from Karin’s, keeping the seeds out of view as I slid them into my pocket, beside the mirror.

The ivy leaves at Karin’s wrist were wilting, one by one. “The land knows me, now that the Lady is gone. I cannot fight it—you and Allie must leave this place.”

“We won’t go without you!” Allie said as Karin pressed her hand toward mine and I took it. I’d been thinking the same thing. If something needed fighting, we’d help Karin fight it.

“Liza, please.” Karin’s voice held steady, but there was something in her eyes, beyond their lack of focus, something wild seeking to break free. Whatever she fought, it was somewhere inside her. “I will not leave until I know you are both safe.”

Of course we wouldn’t abandon Karin here. I looked to the standing stone. It grew bright, catching the moon’s silver glow. I stepped toward it, seeking the seer’s visions that would lead us safely home.

“Oh, I think not.” Nys touched the stone an instant before I did, and as he did, I saw—

Matthew, running toward Kate’s mirror, his grandmother right behind. The silvered glass shattered, sending shards flying. Matthew threw up his arms, mouthed my name—and then the image shattered as the glass had, and I stared at lifeless stone
.

Nys gave me a dark look. “So you see. Stone shaping and visions go together nearly as well as summoning and visions do. Come here, Liza.”

The glamour in his voice was a velvet rope, pulling me toward him. The seeds’ pull remained stronger. I backed away, clutching Allie’s hand. She grabbed Karin’s hand in turn. Karin made whispering sounds as she rocked back and forth on her heels. Elin stepped toward her mother, looking uncertain for the first time.

“There are many ways to control humans.” A rough smile crossed Nys’s face. “Allie. Come to me, please.”

It wasn’t her full name, but for glamour, unlike summoning, it was enough. Allie stiffened and jerked free of my grasp. She dropped Karin’s hand and started toward Nys, feet shuffling through the ash as if she were asleep. I grabbed Allie’s hand again; she barely seemed to notice.

Karin fell to her knees. “This is not right. This cannot last. Too long has death been held back—the seeds are not enough. Roots crumble, branches fall
—run!
” Karin toppled forward into the ashes. Elin ran to her
side as Allie reached for Nys’s cheek, a slow, fascinated smile crossing her face.

Karin began shuddering where she lay. Elin grabbed her shoulders and rolled her over. “Don’t you dare,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare leave me again.”

Allie lurched free and threw herself toward Nys. I grabbed her before the stone shaper could. Elin wouldn’t let her mother die if she could help it, but no one here cared what happened to Allie but me.

Karin’s voice rattled like wind through dry branches, nothing human in it. Allie twisted in my hold. I couldn’t protect them both, and I couldn’t fight Nys and possibly Elin while doing so.

Nys kept smiling, and I knew he knew it, too. “Allie, child. Come here.”

“Sorry, Karin.” I threw Allie over my shoulder, and I ran. My feet crunched over dead ash, kicking up clouds of dust. I’d come back. Somehow, I’d come back. Allie wriggled and pummeled my back and kicked my shins. “Let me go! I have to go to him!”

I didn’t waste breath to glance back to see whether Nys followed. I put all my energy into running, weaving around more dead tree snags and ignoring the small rocks that cut my bare feet. The warm wind stole the moisture from my throat.

Allie went limp over my shoulder. “Don’t let me go,” she whispered. “Please.”

“I won’t.” I ran faster without her fighting me. Ash gave way to smoother stone.

The ground shuddered, and emptiness gaped open beneath me. Allie screamed as we tumbled into the dark.

I didn’t let go, not even when I crashed into more stone with a sharp snap.
Like bone breaking
, I thought, and then pain seared through my leg and hip.

Just like that
. The pain roared into a fire, burning all other thoughts away.

Chapter 4

I
fought to breathe through the burning, to see, to move.

“Hold still!” Allie cried. Numbing cold melted the fire away. I tried to sit up, and pain flared hot once more. Allie pushed me down onto my back. “I mean it!” Her hands moved along my body, lingering over my right hip and leg.