“I might, I might at that.” She snickered and I wanted to back away from that curiously large head, but I forced myself to stay put.
“Riddle me this . . . what binds a snow hag, but can be broken? Not a solemn oath. Not a blood promise.”
“No, no . . . agreed. They are too strong to be broken.” Her eyes lit up and she glanced at me.
I looked at Chatter and again sent a message along the slipstream.
What are you doing?
Remember your history? Oh, that’s right—you did not learn while in the city. She cannot tell us outright. She is one of the Wilding Fae. We must guess until we find what holds her, and then figure out how to break it.
Ah, now I understood. If we wanted her help, we had to break the chains Myst had bound around her without any direct instruction from her. I nodded at him and he turned back to the creature.
“What bonds are soft enough to be broken? My guess would be a bond unwillingly placed?” He cocked his head.
“You might guess correctly on that one.”
“Then a spell, perhaps . . .” He paused and—at the wary look in her eye—added, “or perhaps . . . not a spell outright but a
trick
. Let me think . . . Myst is a huntress. Hunters use snares. A magical snare!”
The snow hag cackled. “You might guess correctly again!”
Chatter turned to Peyton and me. “Myst used a magical snare to gain control of the snow hag. Magical snares can be disarmed if we figure out their trigger. They’re very much like a regular snare, but if you trip the trigger, you become magically bound rather than physically.”
I screwed up my courage and decided to give Chatter’s guessing game a chance. I turned to the snow hag. “I’m guessing someone near might be newly trapped. That it hasn’t been long since they were ensnared.”
She laughed, then. “You would guess correctly, my pretty.”
“My guess it wasn’t far from here.”
“Again, a good and reasonable guess.”
“How did you know that?” Chatter asked.
“Myst is able to enchant and bewitch, but the snow hag is obviously not enchanted by her enforced host. So most likely, the snare was set out here, away from the barrow. We should look around this area. Snared or not, the snow hag is dangerous, and Myst wouldn’t want her too close, but she thought her powers too good to waste.”
We began to look around the area, the snow hag propping herself against a boulder covered with a layer of ice. She looked content, staring off into the distance, as we peeked under shrubs and behind trees. After a few minutes, Chatter held up a broken wire.
“Found it. Now to trace it back to—here we go.” He pulled out the magically inscribed peg that had held it in the ground, shaking the snow off it. “I’m not sure if I’m familiar with all these symbols, but a few I recognize.”
Handing it to me, he glanced around and, once again, whispered into the slipstream.
We cannot tarry, but if we can gain her help, then we may have an ally for a long time to come.
I understand.
I took the wire and examined it. Some of the symbols stood out clearly to me. Because of the way the magic of the snare spell worked, the wires and pegs usually contained the word to free the ensnared, but it would be invisible to them. I picked through the symbols, reading them as carefully as I could. But something stood out—something in the pattern of the words. And then I realized that I recognized not only the pattern of speech in the spell, but the actual etching itself.
Aunt Heather.
Heather had set the snare spell for Myst. I jerked my head up to stare bleakly at Chatter and Peyton.
“My aunt. She’s the . . .” I stopped at Chatter’s quick shake of the head. He was right—if the snow hag found out who had captured her, she’d go after her. In this case, though, that might not be a bad thing. Heather could never return to her former state. She belonged to Myst. But the snow hag might also seek revenge on Rhiannon—or me—and that, we couldn’t chance.
I tucked the snare away. Heather had touched it and so it might be useful in casting a spell on her. “I know the chant to release you,” I said to the snow hag. “But riddle me this: Why should I let someone free from a magical snare?”
You never just asked a Wilding one for a favor—that would forever put you at their mercy. But if you played your cards right, you could bargain your way into a deal.
The snow hag frowned, tilting her head. “Someone might have information to share—might play double duty and keep an eye on the enemy. For there are secrets to this forest that even the Mistress of Mayhem does not understand, and there are creatures who do not hearken well to her form of rule.”
She was offering to play double agent, to give us information and quite possibly show us something that could hurt Myst.
With a glance at Chatter, I said, “We would have to have a binding oath that Myst will never find out, should someone choose to do this. Blood will be spilled.”
“Blood, blood, blood, the juice of life, the drink of the damned. Spill a little blood, spill a little secret. No harm, no foul.” Her voice singsonged over the words, traipsing like an arpeggio, a light trill on the wind.
I pulled out my switchblade. That was as close to a
yes
as we were going to get. “Then I would say, a drop of blood for the release word would be a good bargain. A binding oath to keep secret our presence and to tell us truths about this woodland that Myst does not know.”
The snow hag nodded. “That would be a fair trade, and a fool would not accept the deal, but one wise in the ways of the world would jump at the chance.” She held out her hand and I cut her palm, then my own, and we clasped hands. The feel of her blood on my palm was slippery, and tingled, and I wondered if she had any disease, but it was too late to worry about that now.
As soon as I pulled away my hand, I said, “To free oneself from a magical snare, it might be prudent to whisper the words,
Arcanum, Arcanum, archanumist. Vilathia, reshon, reshadar.
”
The snow hag cracked a wily grin and repeated the charm, and a subtle breeze swept through. I could hear the sound of magical chains breaking in the slipstream. The Wilding Fae tipped her head to and fro, then tapped her nose with one long, jointed finger.
“A bargain offered, a bargain kept. Never shirk a debt, never break a promise. Spill a little blood, now a little secret. Myst would not like this, should she know. Myst is a spider in her sleep, weaving her plans and shenanigans. But not all spiders are all-clever. Myst does not know about a subterranean pathway that lurks near here. None of her people use it. One could climb in, traipse through the Golden Wood without being sensed, if one wanted to hide.”
Chatter snapped his fingers. “Of course—I had forgotten about it! There’s a tunnel that runs from barrow to barrow. It’s been there longer than I have been alive, and I have no idea what it was used for, but the Queen of Rivers and Rushes closed it up long ago and told us never to play down there. I think . . .” He looked around, then turned to the snow hag. “Riddle me this . . . if there is such a pathway, it would have to have an entrance.”
She burped, loudly, and wiped her nose. “A guess that such an entrance would be hidden beneath the boughs of a holly bush would not entirely be incorrect.”
“Aha!” Chatter bounded over to a clump of trees where a holly bush poked through as the snow hag cleared her throat and spit out a plug of phlegm.
She sniffed the air. “Travelers wouldn’t do well to tarry long on this day, that’s a piece of truth for the taking. And Wilding Fae best be off to home and hearth again before the loosened snare is discovered.” With that, she whirled in a flash of snow and wind and vanished from sight.
“Hurry, come on!” Chatter motioned us over to the holly bush, where he lifted the branches, wincing as they dug into his hand. I couldn’t see anything but dirt protected from the snow by the branches, but Chatter whispered something and there, secreted back next to the trunk of the tree, a faint green light appeared in a square pattern. He quickly slapped the ground three times and the light—and dirt—vanished.
“Down, both of you. It should be safe and it will get us close to the Court of Dreams portal without being noticed.” He motioned to me. “You first, Miss Cicely. I have to go last to close it up again.”
I hesitantly slipped over the side. “Is there a ladder—” I started to ask but then stopped as my feet felt rungs. They were silver. As soon as I touched them, the metal resonated through my body.
I’d always liked silver, but since I’d first turned into an owl, the metal had started to affect me more and more—gold, too, to some extent, but especially silver. Silver was strong with Fae magic, and gold, too, though not as strongly. When the Fae came in contact with silver it was like meeting a friend who made you shiver with their touch. I hoped I wouldn’t develop the bad reaction to iron that most Fae had.
Clinging to the rungs, I slowly let myself down, but I was not climbing through dirt. No, I was moving through some sort of portal, through a dimensional space. All around me was a misty green, swirling like silk, smelling of raspberries and lemonade and warm drowsy afternoons, and it made me want to breathe deep and never let the scent out of my lungs.
I reached the bottom finally, after what seemed like a very long climb, and jumped off the ladder. Peyton was right behind me, and lastly, Chatter. He glanced around. It was so dark I wasn’t sure what he could see, but after a moment, he held out his hand and a miniature flame sprang up in his palm, only it was the color of sunlight shining through tree leaves, and it flickered merrily as he held his hand out in front of him.
The light illuminated the passage, but another flicker caught my eye. I took a moment to examine the walls. I had thought them to be dirt and compacted soil, but they were actually stonework—a wall built to shore up a tunnel that was thousands of years old, and yet the air in here was as fresh as the air outside. The walls sparkled: Between the stones and mortar were shards of colored glass. As I looked at them closely, lights flickered from within the pebbles.
“What are these?” I pointed to one particular stone that was shimmering with a fiery color.
“Magic holds up these walls, the magic of summer. The sparkle you see is encapsulated sunlight, woven into the core of the gem.” He glanced over at me, his eyes shining in the reflection of the light, and I began to realize just how much the Court of Rivers and Rushes had lost when Myst came sweeping through.
A thought occurred to me, but I didn’t want to say anything. Not yet. But what if Lainule had hidden her heartstone down in these tunnels? What if that was why she had sealed them over? Could we possibly find it and return it to her?
My promise to her rang sharply, though, and as much as I wanted to take a look around and see what we could find, I couldn’t bring myself to do so.
Bound by oath
. . . she had extracted a promise from me, and I was powerless to break my word.
Right now
. But later . . . when the risk wasn’t so great . . .
Gathering my thoughts, I turned to Chatter. “It’s close to two P.M. by my guess. We need to get moving.”
“Right, but you’re going to find that time no longer matters. At least for now.”
I wanted to ask what he meant, but he turned away and led us through the winding tunnel. Though it was empty and clear—and actually fairly warm and dry—I felt we were being watched, and it left me uneasy. But I had no sense that Myst or her minions were aware of us. No, it was more like walking through a memory book, where the scent and sounds of old parties and dances that had long ago faded from time played out just on the threshold of hearing.
Even Peyton noticed. “What’s that?” She stopped.
“What?”
She turned this way and that, then relaxed. “Nothing, I guess. I thought I heard something, but . . . there’s nothing here.”
The sudden shifts and currents continued, and as time went on, it felt like we were wandering through a dream. My feet on autopilot, I drifted in and out of the slipstream, trying to catch the voices slipping past in a rush of whispers. There was a peal of laughter, soft words on a dusky summer’s night, a shout of recognition. After a while, I stopped trying to understand and simply let them wash over me and vanish.
After a long time, Chatter held up his hand and pointed toward a fork in the passage. “To the left, then another few moments, and we reach the ladder to climb out.”
I bit my lip, wondering what might be waiting outside for us. “How long have we been walking?”
“This passage is inside the barrow structure. Time shifts while we’re here . . . it bends. There’s no telling how long we’ve been in here, compared to the outer world.”
I’d experienced the time shift before, when I entered Lainule’s realm over at Dovetail Lake. I’d also noticed a shift when I turned into my owl self. Either time flew by without my realizing it, or I’d seem to be out for hours and when I returned, only moments had passed.
I could never seem to control the time shifts, and I didn’t understand them yet, but they were definitely part of my awakening Fae nature. It was as if a part of myself had been locked away, waiting for Prince Charming’s kiss—only the kiss had been a pendant and instead of waking from a magical sleep, I woke to a magical form. Until then, like all of the magic-born, I’d followed the time threads of the yummanii and the Weres, although magic-born—like the Weres—lived longer.