Greenmantle looked at Jesse Dittley. He could not believe they allowed humans to grow so tall. “You’re really making this a bigger deal than it needs to be.”
Jesse Dittley just shook his head, very slowly.
“Stand down!” Greenmantle tried. In the movies, this worked instantly. You pointed a gun at someone, they scurried out of your way. They didn’t just stand there looking at it.
Jesse Dittley said, “THIS IS NOT YOUR CAVE.”
Piper shot him.
Three times, fast, black spots appearing on his shirt and head.
By the time they looked back at her, she already had pointed her gun back at the Gray Man.
Greenmantle could not believe how unbelievably dead the giant man was. He was so very, very dead, and punctured. There were holes in him. Greenmantle couldn’t stop looking at the holes. They probably went all the way through him.
“Piper,” he said. “You just shot that man.”
“No one else was doing anything, seriously. All of this dick slinging!” Piper said. To the Gray Man, she said, “Drag him into the cave.”
“No,” the Gray Man said.
“No?” She had her shooting-people face on — which was to say, the face that she wore all the time.
“Oh, don’t shoot him,” Greenmantle said. His pulse was feeling rather jittery. All he could think about was how much more plausible the documents in that envelope were going to look when paired with the events of this evening. Didn’t Piper know that crime was supposed to involve painstaking planning and cleanup? It wasn’t the shooting that was hard, it was the getting away with it.
“I’m not going to move any bodies without gloves,” the Gray Man said in a chilly voice, demonstrating clearly why he had been good at this. “I would not have shot him without gloves, either. Prints and gunpowder residue are stupid ways to end up in prison.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Piper said. “Morris? You’re wearing gloves. Drag that dude and let’s get going.”
“What about him?” Morris asked, looking at the Gray Man.
“Tie him up. We’ll bring him with. Colin, why are you just standing there?”
“Actually,” Greenmantle said, “I think I’m going to sit this one out.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Not only was he not kidding, he was considering vomiting. He should have stayed single. He should have stayed in Boston. He should have been single in Boston. He was part of the way toward the door; he kind of wanted to be sure that he had a bit of cover in case she got pissed and decided to shoot him, too. “I’m just going to … head back. Don’t get me wrong, I think you look fantastic with the gun, but …”
“This is just. So. Typical. You always say, ‘We’re going to do this together, you and me,’ and then who ends up always doing it? Me, while you go start some other new project. Fine. Go on back. Don’t expect me to hurry back after you, though.”
He met the Gray Man’s eyes. The Gray Man was in the process of having his hands tied behind him by Morris. Efficiently, with a zip tie.
The Gray Man looked at Jesse Dittley’s body and closed his eyes for a second. Unbelievably, he looked angry, so he must have possessed emotions after all.
Greenmantle hesitated.
“Piss or get off the pot,” Piper snapped.
“Just go, Colin,” the Gray Man said. “You would have spared us both a lot of trouble if you’d never come.”
Greenmantle took the opportunity to go. He got lost heading back across the field — he had such a shit sense of direction — but once in the car, he knew the way. Away. All directions were away.
Blue Sargent was afraid.
There are many good words for the opposite of afraid. Unafraid, fearless, unfrightened.
Some might suggest courageous or brave as opposites.
But Blue Sargent was brave because she was afraid.
If Persephone could die, anyone could die. Maura could die. Gansey could die. There didn’t have to be ceremony or portent.
It could happen in a moment.
They went to Cabeswater again. Calla came with, but they were sans Malory, who was still unreachable, and sans Mr. Gray, who had vanished without explanation, and sans Noah, who had appeared only as a brief whisper in Blue’s ear that morning.
Again they were prepared with safety equipment and helmets, only this time Adam and Ronan were to lead the way into the pit. This had been Adam’s idea, quickly backed up by Ronan. Cabeswater would not let Adam die because of the bargain, and it would protect Ronan for reasons unknown.
It was dark. The headlights of Ronan’s BMW and Gansey’s Camaro made it only a few feet into the mist rising from the damp field outside of Cabeswater. It seemed impossible that it was the same day Persephone had died. How did some days have so many hours in them?
Outside of the cars, Blue begged Calla, “Please stay here and keep time with Matthew.”
“No way, chicken. I’m coming with you,” Calla said. “I’m not letting you do this by yourself.”
“Please,” Blue said again. “I’m not by myself. And I can’t take it if —”
She didn’t finish. She couldn’t say if you died, too.
Calla put her hands on either side of Blue’s head, smoothing down her unsmoothable hair. Blue knew that she was feeling everything that Blue couldn’t say, but she was okay with that. Words were impossible.
Calla studied Blue’s eyes. Her fingers studied Blue’s soul.
Please trust me please stay here please trust me please stay here please don’t die
Finally, Calla said, “Grounding. I’m good for grounding. I will stay here and ground you.”
“Thank you,” Blue whispered.
Inside Cabeswater was mist and more mist. Ronan greeted the trees as he moved in a pool of muzzy light cast from the dream light he had brought from the Barns. Adam had called it the ghost light, and it seemed appropriate.
Ronan respectfully asked for safe passage.
It reminded Blue of a prayer.
The trees rustled a response, unseen leaves moving in the night.
“What did they say?” Gansey asked suddenly. “Didn’t they just say to be careful?”
Ronan said, “The third sleeper. They warned us not to wake him.”
They went into the cave.
On the way down the tunnel toward the pit, Gwenllian sang a song about proving oneself worthy for a king.
They went in deeper.
Gwenllian was still singing, now about tasks and trials and pretender knights. Adam’s hands fisted and unfisted in the moving headlamp beams.
“Please shut up,” Blue said.
“We’re here,” Ronan said.
Gwenllian shut up.
Adam joined Ronan at the edge of the precipice, both of them peering in as if they might be able to see the bottom. The light around them was curious and golden, thrown not only by the flashlights and headlamps but by the ghost light.
Adam murmured something to Ronan. Ronan shook his head.
“Still bottomless?” Gansey’s voice came from far back.
Ronan unslung the ghost light from his shoulder, where it hung like a messenger bag, and tied it to one of the safety ropes.
Blue was more afraid than before. It was easier to be unafraid when you were the one doing the fearful things.
“Lower that in,” Ronan directed Adam. “Let’s take a look around down there, right?”
The two boys stood for several long minutes, swinging the ghost light in the pit. Swaths of light cut crazily back and forth above the pit as they did. But they seemed unsatisfied with their results. Adam leaned forward — Ronan gripped his arm tightly — and then the two of them turned back to where the others waited.
“Can’t see a thing,” Adam said. “There’s nothing to do but go in.”
“Please —” Gansey started, then stopped. “Be careful.”
Adam and Ronan regarded each other, and then the pit. They looked winsome and
brave, trusting of Cabeswater or of each other. They did not look afraid, so Blue was afraid for them.
“Say it,” Ronan told Gansey.
“Say what?”
“Excelsior.”
“That’s onward and upward,” Gansey said. “It means to ascend. That’s opposite.”
“Oh, well,” Ronan said. “Squash one, squash two, squash three on and on and on —”
Then he disappeared into the hole, his voice still carrying up.
Adam said, “I’m not singing along!” but he followed Ronan in.
Ronan’s voice sang and sang and then suddenly broke off.
There was silence.
A complete silence, the sort one can only achieve in a hole in the ground.
Then there was a skittering sound, like pebbles shimmying over rock.
And more silence.
“Jesus,” Gansey said. “I can’t take this.”
“Worry is weakness, king,” Gwenllian piped up.
Silence.
Then a hoarse, cutoff shout in an unrecognizable voice. Adam, or Ronan, or something else entirely.
Gansey made a terrible sound and rested his forehead against the wall. Blue’s hand shot out to grab his, tightly. She couldn’t bear it, either, but there was nothing to do but bear it. Inside her, this new, black fear grew, the knowledge that death happened in a moment and to anyone. Ronan and Adam could be dead and there would be no earthquake. There would be no fanfare.
The dread was like blood filling her stomach.
Did they trust Cabeswater?
That was the question.
Did that pit stretch out of Cabeswater’s reach?
That was the second question.
“I can’t live with this,” Gansey said. “If anything has happened.”
“You’ll never be a king,” Gwenllian said. “Don’t you know how war works?”
But her bitterness wasn’t really for Gansey; it was a jeer for someone who had buried her or been buried with her long ago.
Suddenly, a voice came from down below.
“Gansey?”
“Adam,” Gansey shouted. “Adam?”
The voice came up again. “We’re coming back to show you the way down!”
They had found a valley of skeletons.
The pit was not bottomless, although it was vast and deep. The bottom had slanted and narrowed, shuttling them away from Gansey and the others, sliding them surprisingly and abruptly away from the surface. Under the diffuse gaze of the ghost light, Adam caught a glimpse of strange nests clinging to the wall. He flung his hands out, trying to slow himself. The holes of the nests heaved with something black and restless, but Adam couldn’t see what. They might have been insect nests, but then he heard Ronan, skittering ahead of him, speaking rapidly in Latin, and even as Adam skidded by them, he saw them transmuting to twiggy birds’ nests.
This was their job, Adam realized. This was what they had to offer: making it safe for the others. That was what they had promised: to be Gansey’s magicians.
So they had slid, and they had whispered, and they had asked, and together they’d convinced Cabeswater to transform the nests to something harmless. At least for a while.
Then they had shot out the bottom of the slope into a cavern.
Now the others had joined them, and they all gazed at the underground valley.
In between them and the faraway opposite wall was a herd of bones, an army of bones, a tragedy of bones. There were horse skeletons and deer skeletons, tiny cat skeletons and sinuous weasel skeletons. Every one of them was caught mid-run, all pointed toward the teens standing by the valley entrance.
Somehow the effect was of awe, not terror.
The room itself was a wonder, too. It was a vast bowl of a cavern room, twice as long as it was wide. Godfingers of light streamed down from holes in the cavern ceiling hundreds of feet overhead. Unlike the cavern they had just left behind, this valley had color: ferns and moss reached for the unreachable sunlight.
“Clouds,” whispered Blue.
It was true; the ceiling was so far overhead that mist clung to the roof, pierced by stalactites.
Adam felt as if he’d slid into one of Ronan’s dreams.
Gwenllian began to laugh and clap her hands. The laugh, a song itself, echoed off the ceilings.
“Shut her up, someone,” Ronan said. “Before I do.”
“What is this place?” Blue asked.
Adam was the first to step down.
“Careful —” Gansey warned.
Gwenllian danced ahead. “What are you afraid of? Some bones?”
She kicked one of the cat skeletons; bones flew. Adam winced.
“Don’t do that!” Blue said.
“The dead stay dead stay dead,” Gwenllian replied, and used a femur to crash through another skeleton.
“Not always,” Gansey warned. “Have a care.”
“Yes, Father!” But she wound up for another great kick.
“Ronan,” Gansey said sharply, and Ronan moved to stop her, binding her arms behind her without malice or squeamishness.
Adam stopped by one of the beasts near the front; its shoulder was taller than him, its great skull even higher, and above it all spread a set of antlers that seemed massive in comparison even to the giant skeleton. It was beautiful.
Blue’s voice came from very close. “It’s an Irish elk.”
He turned to find her beside him, touching one of the great white bones. She ran her finger along it so tenderly that it was as if it were alive.
“They’re extinct,” she added. “I always felt bad that I’d never get to see one. Look how many of them there are.”
Adam did look; there were many. But to look at them was to see beyond them, and to see beyond them was to be dazzled again by this spectacle of bones. A thousand animals, suspended on their toes. It was reminding him of something, though he couldn’t think what.
He craned to look at the entrance, then at Ronan and Gwenllian. Gansey moved through the skeletons as if in a dream, his face caught with wonder and caution. He touched the arched neck of a skeletal creature with respect, and Adam remembered him telling Ronan that he had never left a place worse for being there. Adam understood, then, that Gansey and Blue’s awe changed this place. Ronan and Adam may have seen this place as magical, but Gansey and Blue’s wonder made it holy. It became a cathedral of bones.
They slowly walked through the valley, searching for answers and clues. There was no other exit to the room. There was only this vast space, and a stream running along its floor, disappearing beneath a rock wall.
“What is the point of this?”
“Tricks and more tricks,” Gwenllian snarled. “All brave, young, and handsome — all noble and true —”
“Whosoever pulls this sword from this stone,” Gansey muttered. Blue nodded. “This is a test.”
“We wake them,” Ronan said suddenly. He released Gwenllian. “That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
“It’s not my test, bold sir knight,” Gwenllian said. “You’re up.” She made cowboy shooters at him.
Blue’s eyes were on the Irish elk; she was quite taken by it. “How do you wake bones?”
“Same as you’d wake a dreamer,” Gwenllian cooed, her words for Ronan. “If you cannot wake these bones, how can you expect to raise my father? But what do I see on your shoulders? Oh, failure is what you’re wearing these days, I see — it matches your eyes. You’ve tried this before, faulty dreamer, but you’ve got more passion than accuracy, don’t you?”
“Stop,” Gansey said.
He said it in such a way that they all stopped and looked at him.
There was no anger in his voice, no unfairness. He stood beside a brace of massive skeletal stags, his shoulders square and his eyes serious. For a moment, Adam saw the present, but he also saw the past, and the future, stretched out as when Persephone had inspired him to see his own death. He saw Gansey here now, but somehow here always, just about to leave thi
s moment, or just about to enter it, or living it.
Then his thoughts hitched and time moved again.
“Stop goading them, Gwenllian,” Gansey said. “Do you think you’re the only one with a right to bitterness here? Why don’t you use your skills of seeing beneath to encourage instead of tear down?”
“I would like to see quite a bit of what’s going on beneath all of the young men here,” Gwenllian said. “You may volunteer first for my attention if you’d like.”
Then Gansey rolled his eyes and blew out a breath in a very unkingly way. “Ignore her. Adam, give me an idea.”
Adam was always called on, even when he didn’t lift his hand. He thought of what Ronan had already failed to accomplish, and he thought of the moment on the mountaintop with Blue and Noah, and then, finally, he remembered what Persephone had said about the power of three. Then he said, “Ronan, did you bring your dream thing?”
Ronan gestured to the bag that hung below the dream light.
“The what?” Blue asked.
Adam waved his hand; this wasn’t the time to explain. “Remember the Barns? You try to wake them like the cows, Ronan. I’ll see if I can redirect the ley line to give you more energy to work with; Blue will amplify. Gansey can … move stones?”
Gansey nodded his approval. He didn’t understand the plan, but he didn’t need to: He trusted Adam’s judgment.
Ronan unslung his bag, carefully unwrapping his dream thing from the now rather manky polar fleece. He hid it mostly from view as Adam crouched and pressed his fingers to the rock. He knew as soon as he touched it that they were not properly in Cabeswater anymore; they’d dug beneath it. The ley line was still there, though, and if he moved some of the stones, he might be able to point it at the skeletons.
“Blue, Gansey, help me,” he said, directing them.
Gwenllian watched with curled lip.
“You could help, too,” he told her.
“No,” she replied. “I couldn’t.”
She didn’t say that she couldn’t help him, but it was understood. Gansey didn’t even bother to chastise her this time. He merely worked with Blue to move the stones Adam indicated. Then they returned to the beast at the very front of the herd.
Ronan waited with the dream thing, eyes averted. Then, as they stood around it, he breathed over the top of the dream word, just as he had at the Barns.