I didn’t think there were any naturally occurring caves in this area. There are a few man-made caves because some of the wineries have carved their own caverns into the basalt to age their wines. Most of our geology is igneous, which allows for lava tubes, but no limestone caves like the ones in Carlsbad. I suppose magic, if it is strong enough, doesn’t care much about geology—because we were in a huge cave whose walls, ceiling, and floor were not stone but earth and roots.
The Elphame was magic made, but I wondered if it was the fairy queen’s magic that had created it. Ariana had looked at the tree roots in the cave Zee’s entrance had brought us to, and she said that there must be a forest lord about. Looking around, I thought she was right.
The floor was woven from tree roots—I had to look sharp not to trip and draw attention to myself again. The fairy queen’s throne was the only thing in the whole room that had not altered when I saw through the glamour. The pillars were thick roots hanging from the ceiling or bursting from the floor like living stalactites and stalagmites. The benches were formed of living wood, not so pretty as the queen’s illusions, but more beautiful.
Most of the fae in the room were not pretty—though there were a few as long as your tastes weren’t hung up on humanity as a standard for beauty. None of them looked like lords and ladies—Ariana and the fairy queen herself were the most human-appearing among them, and neither would have been able to walk into a store without everyone knowing that she was other.
I didn’t waste much time looking at the court fae, though. It was the creature that lay behind the fairy queen’s throne that caught my attention. It lay huge and still, like a great redwood cut down by the woodsman’s axe. It had bark and evergreen needles—but it also had four eyes as big as dinner plates that glowed like ruby glass lanterns. It was bound with iron chains that glittered with magic. I didn’t know what a forest lord looked like, but a giant tree with eyes seemed like a strong possibility.
Next to the throne was a middle-aged woman who had the strong features and coloring of the Mediterranean people—Greek or Italian or possibly even Turkish. She wore the collar I’d begun to associate with the fairy queen’s thralls, but she was also chained to the throne. My nose told me that somewhere among the fae, the humans, and the dying forest lord, there was a witch. I could see a witch being tough enough that the fairy queen would want more than just a silver ring around her throat to ensure she was controlled.
Among those who call themselves witches, there are various types. Least troublesome are the humans who have adopted Wicca as their religion. Some of them have a spark of power, enough to enrich their faith, but not so much to attract the attention of bigger and nastier things.
Then there are the white witches—people born to the witch families who have chosen to do no harm. Like the mundane-born witches, white witches are usually not very powerful—because witch magic gets its power from death, pain, and sacrifice, and white witches have chosen to eschew that.
Most witches of any power are black witches. They smell of it, some more than others. There are black witches who skirt the doing of actual evil. Elizaveta Arkadyevna, our pack’s witch, is one of those. She is very powerful as witches—even as black witches—go. But, as I understand it, skirting evil is difficult, time-consuming, and requires a lot more from a practitioner than true black magic does. It is so much easier to use the suffering of others to make magic, and the results are more predictable.
This witch—and as we closed toward the throne, the smell got stronger and stronger, making my supposition more and more likely—this witch stank of the blackest magic. In her neighborhood, pets and small children would go missing, and even the occasional homeless man. I was betting that the iron chains binding the forest lord were hers.
The room the others saw, for all its height, was not a terribly big one. The cave I could see was bigger, but almost half of it was taken up by the forest lord behind the throne. It didn’t take long for us to reach the dais.
The fairy queen sat on the edge of the seat of the silver throne and reached down to pet her witch—who didn’t seem to appreciate it much. The queen’s wings fluttered as she sat, then folded so she could lean against the back of the throne.
Her eyelids fluttered with a faint wrip-wrip sound. Once I was facing her, I could tell that her eyes were just . . . wrong. She would stare and stare, then blink rapidly. It was hard to watch.
“Jesse,” she said. “Tell me your name?”
“Jessica Tamarind Hauptman,” Jesse said, her voice not quite right.
“Jessica,” said the queen. “Isn’t that a pretty name? Come sit at my feet, Jessica.” She looked at me and smiled as Jesse did as she was bid.
The queen leaned forward to pet her head—Jesse seemed to appreciate it more than the witch had. “She is half- mine already,” the queen told me. “Your young man, Gabriel, and I have already done this as well. Haven’t we?”
“Yes, my queen,” he murmured tightly.
“I haven’t collared him because of our bargain, Mercedes Thompson, but while a human is in my presence, unless I suppress my magic, they belong to me. It was not smart of you to bring me another thrall.” She patted Jesse one last time, then sat back. “But that is not all you brought into my Elphame. Tell me, Mercedes, how is it that you managed to bring not only a fae, but a wolf with you when you were not to speak of this to them?”
I gave her the short version. “I taped our phone conversation.”
“I see.” She looked like she’d swallowed a lemon, but didn’t complain. “So, Mercedes Thompson, you would cry bargain.” She smiled coolly. “You want to exchange the Silver Borne for your life?”
Ariana gave me a sharp look, but I knew how to listen—and I knew about fairy bargains that left you ruing the day you made them, even before I’d read Phin’s book. If I wasn’t really careful, I could bargain the book for my life—and end up wishing myself dead. For instance, I could get out of here and be forced to leave Jesse and Gabriel behind.
“I don’t know,” I said, squirming under the weight of the fairy queen’s gaze. I bit the inside of my lip until it bled—and it hurt because human-shaped teeth aren’t sharp enough to cut through skin easily.
“Samuel,” I said, “a kiss for courage and clear-seeing, my love?”
Samuel turned to me, startled—a kiss was probably the last thing that he’d been thinking of. I stood on my tiptoes and damn near had to climb him to get to his mouth. I clamped my open lips to his and tried to get as much blood into his mouth as I could. After the barest instant he seemed to understand what I was doing. He participated fully, licked my lip, and set me down gently.
I hoped the blood would work as it had in the bookstore, and that he saw what I did. It was hard to say from Samuel’s reaction, but I thought it had. Maybe it wouldn’t matter, but, outside of the gun in my shoulder holster and the one in the small of Jesse’s back, Samuel was our best weapon against the fae. Maybe he was better than the guns because he’d be a lot harder to stop. It couldn’t hurt to have him know what he was fighting.
“Very affecting,” the queen said, sounding bored. “Are you courageous and clear-sighted enough to give me the Silver Borne yet?”
“That is not a bargain,” I said, trying to keep her from seeing the blood on my mouth. “It is an exchange. I would consider such an exchange only if my comrades are allowed to leave. It is having them leave here safely and soon that I’m interested in bargaining for.”
“A true bargain?” she said. “Do you play an instrument?”
The piano and I have a hate- hate relationship. I didn’t consider that playing, and I know my piano teacher hadn’t either. “No.”
“A different bargain, then. You hold something of my choosing while it changes. For each time it changes, I release one person.”
She snapped her finger, and the witch muttered to herself, and the fae nearest us—a short and fine-boned creature with skin like a peach and pinkish green hair—burst
into flame. It wasn’t glamour because the room didn’t change. They were real flames even though they didn’t seem to hurt the fae.
“She can’t hold flame, without dying,” said Ariana. She hadn’t looked at Samuel or me since I kissed him. I don’t know if she suspected something was up—or if she thought we were lovers. “And that breaks the heart of the bargain. It must be something that is possible—however unlikely—for the challenger to accomplish.”
“Fine,” said the queen. “If you are so particular, Silver, you may be the challenger.” She laughed, and the roots in the ceiling writhed as the sound of bells echoed in the room. “Of course I knew who you were, dear Silver—how could you think otherwise? Are there so many of us who chose to live so disfigured by the fangs of hounds and wolves? No. Only Silver. So you may take this bargain, and the alternative is that I will kill this almost-mortal woman who is not so human as your Phin or the boy. Half-blood is not human enough to be saved by the guesting laws of the Elphame.”
Ariana didn’t seem to hear the queen’s taunts. Instead, she said clearly and slowly, “I take hold of this fae, who will change—the first shape of fire counts as one. After that, for every time he changes, one of my comrades will go free. He will change five more times, three minutes each form, and if I succeed, all shall leave. If I don’t, one leaves for each shape I hold.”
As she was talking, Ariana set Phin down next to Gabriel. Even under the queen’s thrall, Gabriel put a hand on Phin’s shoulder to steady him.
“Four times,” said the queen. “Five shapes. I will not let go of Mercedes Thompson, who holds the Silver Borne.”
“It’s all right,” I told Ariana. “I’m a survivor. Ask anyone. I can deal with the queen about the book when all of you are safe.”
“Six forms,” said Ariana. “One for each. It is in the rules. ‘The bargain requested, all prisoners invested in the outcome tested.’ ”
The poetry didn’t flow well, but I suppose that it didn’t need to be very good poetry to record the rules of a fairy queen.
The queen’s eyes fluttered in irritation. I had a hard time not looking away—or blinking too fast myself.
“Agreed,” she snarled. “But Mercedes is the last to be freed and your grandson first.”
Samuel said, “Phin, Jesse, Gabriel, Ariana, me, and Mercedes, then.”
“Phin, Ariana, then the rest followed at the end by Mercedes,” counteroffered the queen.
I saw what she was doing. By putting Ariana and Phin at the beginning, she thought she was reducing Ariana’s motivation even as the bargain became harder and harder to keep.
Samuel shook his head. “Phin, Jesse, Gabriel, Ariana, me, and Mercedes.”
“I am getting bored,” said the queen. “Agreed. The bargain is struck.”
Ariana gave Samuel a narrow- eyed look—I think it was because he put her before him. But I agreed with him. Get the helpless ones out first, then those who could best protect themselves. That meant Ariana before Samuel.
“The bargain is accepted,” agreed Ariana, and she stepped forward, embracing the flaming fae. As soon as she touched him, her hair burst into flame as did her clothing, and what was not burnable dropped to the ground, including the stone Zee had given her to hold. Its steady light was almost unnoticeable against the flames as the rest of Ariana smoldered a moment before lighting up as well.
“She holds earth, air, fire, and water,” Samuel told me. If I hadn’t known him as well as I did, I might have thought he was disinterested. “It is what made her able to do great magic after most of Underhill was out of reach. Magic fire will do her no harm.”
The queen was speaking to the witch. After she was finished talking, the witch stood up, a steel knife in her hand. She gathered up her chains and moved to the farthest extent, which left her just able to reach the forest lord. She plunged the knife into the tree-like creature, and it bellowed, shook, and bled amber fluid onto the knife. The floor moved under my feet and the ceiling roots contracted and wiggled.
Samuel put a hand under my elbow to steady me—so I knew the blood had worked. He could see through the glamour to the reality of what we dealt with.
The witch licked the knife and dipped a finger into the cut she’d made in the trapped fae. She used that finger to draw symbols that hung in the air where she’d put them, and glowed a sickly yellow. She pulled up her shirt to expose the skin of her belly, then she reached into the air and grabbed the symbols and slapped them onto her bare skin. When she was finished, she walked back to the throne, sat down, and finished cleaning the blade with her tongue. She caught me watching her and smiled.
Maybe she didn’t know about the glamour, or maybe she thought I was afraid of cats. One thing was for sure: she knew that I was scared of her. I wished I knew what she had done.
Whatever it was, it was unlikely to be helpful to us. And we needed help. Three minutes times six is eighteen—and Zee had already been holding the entrance open for a while. Adding eighteen minutes was going to push him well beyond the hour he’d promised. The fairy queen wouldn’t need Zee’s opening to allow them to leave—but if it was still open, then they would walk out on the same day they’d entered.
The time was up at last, and the fae Ariana held turned to ice. Three minutes is a long time to hold on to a giant ice cube. I couldn’t understand why Ariana continued to hug him close instead of holding him more loosely so not as much of her was against him. Especially as all of her clothes had burned away and she was naked, with nothing between her and the ice.
“Flesh to flesh, remember,” said the fairy queen in such a grumpy tone that I knew she’d hoped Ariana would back off.
I heard some murmurs from the fae around us, remarking upon Ariana’s scars. How ugly they were, how shameful. I thought they might be commenting on purpose, as some subterfuge of the fairy queen, but if so, their taunts seemed to have no effect I could see on Ariana.
Three minutes was up, and Jesse was safe—and the fae Ariana was holding turned into smoke. She seemed to have been prepared for it, though, because as the ends of him started to dissolve, she reached out and snagged the cloak of the fae who was nearest her. She wrapped the cloak around herself and the fae, then touched the cloak with her cold hand, and a layer of ice covered it, trapping the smoke in the frozen cloth.
Surreptitiously, I glanced around at the fae who were in the room with us. There had been a few in the hall when we’d gotten here, but the others had entered more purposefully afterward, as if she’d summoned them all. I counted twenty- eight, not including the forest lord, who, I suspected, couldn’t be numbered among her followers.
I looked at their faces, and they seemed to be less . . . blank than the thralls, but I didn’t think that they were free agents either. Maybe it was the way all twenty-eight stared hungrily at the queen, as if they were waiting for any task, any order—anything at all that they could do for their true love whom they worshipped. I’ve been around the fae. I’ve seldom seen any three of them see eye to eye on anything, let alone twenty-eight.
“Look at the scars her father gave her,” said one.
“How could she live through that—it looks as though she’s been mauled by beasts.”
“Don’t you know the story?” said a third. They all looked at Ariana, instead of the fairy queen, as the third one continued. “Her father called his beasts to torture her every morning for three years.”
Ariana’s mouth tightened as she remembered, too. And then that three minutes was up as well—she’d won freedom for Gabriel.
The fae under the cloak began to grow, and Ariana let the cloth fall to the ground. At first I couldn’t figure out the challenge. The creature had changed into another fae, a large male with almost human features. His skin was the color and texture of a silver birch, some places smooth and white and others rough and dark gray or black. His hair looked like shredded bark and hung around his face. He wasn’t ugly or horrible—but then Ariana started to shake.
Be
side me, Samuel stiffened, a low growl beginning in his throat.
“Hello, daughter mine,” the fae-man with bark skin said. After that, he switched to Welsh; the accent was so obscure I couldn’t tell what he said. He raised his right arm—and I saw that it had no hand on the end of it—and petted her hair with it.
Ariana’s father had been a forest lord, but evidently not the same kind of forest lord as the one the fairy queen held, because he looked quite a bit different.
The fairy queen had been using her people to weaken Ariana for this moment, to remind her of what had been done to her by this man. But she had underestimated Ariana if she thought Ariana was going to lose this easily. Her arms tightened on the man and pulled him next to her.
Samuel’s Welsh I could understand: he wasn’t talking over the phone, he was speaking slowly, and what he said was pretty simple. “He can’t call his hounds, Ari, my love. Don’t worry. They are dead and gone. I made sure of it. He’s not real, not real. She doesn’t have that kind of power. My da, he killed yours. I killed the hounds, and they are not coming back.”
Patiently, he kept up the refrain, giving her something to listen to other than the fae, who evidently wore the face and form of her abusive father.
I was watching the face of the witch, and I wasn’t as certain as Samuel that her father wasn’t real. Witches can do some very scary things. The first three things the fae turned into—fire, ice, and smoke—those all smelled of fae magic to me. This one—other than the scent he bore, which was his own—this one reeked of black magic, witch’s magic—and witches could call back the dead.
For three minutes, Ariana held the man who had been willing to torture her until she was mindless. At the end of the three minutes, she could have let go and walked out of the Elphame, leaving Samuel and me to stand prisoner. She was tougher than that. So when her father turned into a snarling werewolf that bore more than a passing resemblance to Samuel, she went to her knees so she could pull him close and stared—at Samuel. Her eyes grew black, and her face went blank, but she held on, mouthing one word over and over—Samuel’s name.