“You should go,” Tolven said as the darkness drew closer behind him.
I hesitated, then held out my hand. “Come with us,” I said, hoping I wasn’t making a mistake. For the first time, I wondered what it had been like for Karin and Caleb, offering help to an unknown town, not certain how far its humans could be trusted. “The trees aren’t dying in our world.”
“A worthy offer.” Tolven took the purple stone in one hand. The other closed around the seed. “And a tempting one.” He looked at me with his open gaze. “Yet while my thoughts remain my own, I think I might do my people some good below. Do humans accept bonds of friendship with my people?”
“Some of us do.” A breath of ice blew from the tunnel. The dark was only a foot or so from Tolven. “I do.”
“Me too,” Allie said. Her town had accepted faerie folk and their magic long before mine.
“In that case, should there come a time when I can be of no further use to my world, I will seek you in yours. Until then, travel well.” Tolven bowed, more deeply than before, and turned to the tunnel wall. A new passage opened off of it, and he disappeared into it.
“He shouldn’t go back!” Allie cried as the stone closed behind him. “They don’t deserve him, not after they held him here when they knew they could set him free.”
They didn’t deserve him, but I was beginning to think that wasn’t the point. “Did the people you healed deserve it?”
“That’s different! They were sick, and no one can help that!”
Maybe none of us were worthy enough to deserve the good things that happened to us. I inhaled hot wind and open sky like a gift. Together Allie and I left the tunnels behind, walking swiftly through a world of color and light.
Chapter 9
Ash burned the soles of my bare feet as we walked. Sun shone on the snags of dead trees, and I kept blinking the dryness from my eyes.
“Do you think Toby will be okay?” Hot wind blew strands of Allie’s red hair into her face.
I glanced back. How long did we have before Nys found us gone? “I don’t know.” As we neared the more ordered circle of snags surrounding the standing stone, I saw the one stump among them that wasn’t dead. Wider around than my arms could reach, that tree stretched shadow branches like gnarled fingers toward the sky. Karin crouched before it. Allie tightened her grip as I let out a breath. Karin was alive. It was almost more than I’d hoped for. Elin hovered protectively beside her. Karin made soft crooning sounds as she rocked back and forth. She lived, but her mind was still not her own.
“I hear you well enough, Liza.” Elin did not turn from her mother. Beside them, a bowl held a few pale tubers. “Allie, too. There is no sense trying to sneak up on me. My people do not need rest so often as yours do, with every fleeting cycle of the sun.”
I hadn’t been trying to sneak up on her. It was Elin who’d snuck into my house, stealing me away. “Let us take Karin out of here, Elin. You must know she can’t stay in Faerie.”
Elin laughed, a sound jagged as broken glass. “You think it an easy thing, to lead my mother away? You are welcome to do so, then.” She stepped aside. Beneath her green cloak, a short knife and several small pouches hung from her belted brown dress.
I released Allie to approach Karin, fearing some trap. Karin gave a small cry and cupped her hands around something. A thin brown stem, sprouting from the stump. A tiny round leaf unfurled from it. The leaf nuzzled her palm, wilted, and fell to the ashes at her feet. The plant speaker let out a high, animal wail.
“Karin.” I reached for her.
She whirled around, her fist striking my side so hard and fast it knocked the breath from me. I fell to the ground, one ankle twisting with a sickening lurch. Karin squinted, as if puzzled she could not see me, then turned back to the tree and began crooning once more.
“Do you think me a fool?” Elin’s voice came through a haze of pain as Allie pressed hands to my foot. “Of course I would take her out of here if I could. As one of the first line, I can cross between our worlds as easily as any seer. But lost though my mother’s mind may be, gone though her sight may be, her warrior’s skills have not abandoned her. I have been no more able to get near her than you.”
“Your ankle’s not broken,” Allie said. “Just sprained. Here.” A flash of cold silver light took the pain away. Allie sat back, breathing hard. “That was … harder than I expected. I really did push hard, down below. I’d tell you not to walk on it, but we don’t have a choice, do we?”
I stood, watching as Karin called another brown shoot. “Karinna!” I called with my magic. “Come here!”
Karin gave no sign she heard. She just kept singing wordlessly to the new stem, until it, too, wilted away. Karin was the one person who had always been there whenever I’d called.
“She’s lost her name, hasn’t she?” Elin’s voice was flat. “It’s worse for her than for Toby. I should have expected that. She’s the land’s own heir now. She doesn’t just hear the plants. She hears everything.”
“Lost names can be found,” I said. Karin’s shadow remained solid within her. Something of her was yet there, if only we could reach it. I saw the shadow of the seed in her pocket as well. Was it because she heard more than Tolven did that the seed couldn’t help her?
Allie moved to Elin’s side and brushed fingers along storm-dark bruises at her wrist. “Karin hurt you, too.” Light flowed from Allie’s fingers.
Elin jerked away. “It is not broken, and it aches only lightly. Do not waste your power on me. Others need it. Nys isn’t wrong about that.” Elin laughed again. “I told him you would escape, one way or another, when he refused to tell me where he’d hidden you. He does not have my experience underestimating you, Liza.” The laughter died. “I made my bargain with him poorly. I made him vow not to harm my mother but did not think to protect her student as well—and you, Allie, were entirely unexpected. You must know that. I was willing enough to sacrifice you both to bring my mother home, but not to turn you over to Nys.” Elin’s cloak rippled, though there was no wind. “As it is, my mother’s presence has done little to set anything right.”
Karin kept calling stems to grow and die, grow and die, while somewhere outside Matthew and Caleb moved ever closer to the Arch. I stepped toward Karin, and she stiffened. Maybe, if I kept trying, I could reach her at last.
And maybe Matthew and Caleb would die while I did. As far as I could tell, Karin had more time than they did. “You’ll continue keeping watch over her?” I asked Elin.
The weaver turned to me, her silver eyes sharp. “You intend to depart the Realm without my leave? With my grandmother gone and my mother unable to speak for herself, it is me you must answer to. I’ll not have you forget that, Liza.”
None of this would have happened if not for Elin. “Caleb heads this way, Matthew with him.” I fought to keep the anger from my voice. “Toward the Arch. As the Lady’s heir, perhaps you know what that means?”
“Kaylen is coming here?” Elin’s hands twisted in the fabric of her cloak. Did she blame him, as so many did, for starting the War? “Yes, of course he is.” She looked to her mother. “Is there no end to the sacrifices you will both make for humans?”
“Is it true?” Allie asked. “Will coming here really kill him?”
“Oh yes.” Elin turned abruptly from her mother and strode to the standing stone. Allie and I looked at each other.
“Well, come on, then,” Elin said. “Someone needs to see to it that you do not die, as humans tend to do.”
We stared at her, wary of some new trap. Elin sighed. “When my people make a mistake, we try to set things right. It may be different among humans, but even so, I will accompany you on this journey. As far as I can tell, even with her mind gone, Karinna the Fierce remains quite capable of protecting herself and no more requires my presence than she ever did. A few short days without food or drink will not hurt her, any more than a few days without sleep will hurt me.”
I doubted Ethan, who
’d lost his town to her, would think Elin had set anything right, but I couldn’t stop her from leaving. I glanced back. Karin wept as she called another stem to grow, and another. What use was I as her student if I could not help her? I joined Elin at the standing stone. As far as I could tell, Karin would be in no greater danger if I left than if I stayed, and that wasn’t true for Matthew and Caleb. Allie put one hand to my arm and reached for Elin with the other. Elin ignored her to put her own hands to the stone. “I can find my own way to the Arch, without any seer’s visions to delay me.” The stone turned liquid at her touch. She stepped into it and was gone.
Yellow sunlight reflected off the bright rock. The Arch. Show me the Arch. The light grew brighter, filling my sight, and I saw—
Karin, on her knees in the ashes of Faerie, tunic stained with blood, silver eyes dull as tarnished steel. “This madness is welcome indeed,” she whispered as she fell forward. Only then Caleb was behind her, pulling her to her feet. She fought him, hissing like some wild creature as she bent his wrist at an unnatural angle, but his fingers grabbed her wrist in turn, and in a flash of silver light she fell limp to the ground. “I’m sorry, Eldest Sister, but neither of us gets to escape all we’ve done so easily. You will survive this War, as will I.” Caleb hefted her over his shoulders, walked toward a burning lake, and disappeared within it—
Too far. This was too far in the past. “Show me the present,” I whispered, as I’d practiced with Karin so many times. The scene shifted slowly, as if the present were something my visions were reluctant to reveal, until I saw—
Matthew and Caleb running side by side, on four legs and two, running along broken black stone roads, through forests whose green was giving way to red, yellow, gold—and gray, patches of crumbling gray dust, made more dead by the bright colors around them. The wind was wild, and lightning flashed beneath a storm-tossed sky. Branches grabbed at them by day, tree shadows by night. They kept running, toward a crossroads that looked down on a mirrored silver Arch, its top hundreds of feet high, its legs hundreds of feet apart—
I stepped forward, Allie’s hand on my arm. Stone and darkness closed in around me, squeezing the air from my chest. I fought for breath as my heart slowed, stopped for a beat—
—and then I staggered free, into a cold, spitting rain. Elin waited beneath one leg of the silver Arch, which was bright in spite of the thick yellow-gray clouds above. I glanced at that mirror, but no visions sought to draw me into its surface. I’d never been able to look at the Arch without visions before.
“I’d forgotten how big it was.” Allie’s eyes traveled up the mirror’s curve. It stood on a white stone platform that had been soaked by the rain. Autumn was further along here than at home, but the yellow and orange leaves of the trees beyond the platform were broken by patches of gray, just like in my vision. Beyond the trees to the west, bluffs rose toward the sky. To the east, the broad River—which maps called the Mississippi—lapped at the platform and stretched to the far horizon.
“Are humans always so slow?” Elin asked us.
Neither Allie nor I bothered answering that. Allie looked from the Arch to me. “Do we wait here?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to risk letting Caleb and Matthew get this close. “They’ll come to the crossroads.” I’d seen that in my vision, though I didn’t recognize all the paths they took to get there. “We’ll wait there. Just to be safe.” I looked to the River. Its muddy water held a dank, mildewy scent I didn’t like at all.
Allie followed my gaze to the water. “Oh. Right.” Her voice was small. The River would be a problem.
“You feel it, too,” Elin said. It wasn’t a question. “It is worse than when I last came to your world. I can almost see the unraveling threads that flow between its banks, this world’s own threads, crumbling to dust.”
Her words sent ice down my spine. I’d felt death enough flowing south, when I last was here. “What has the crumbling to do with the River?”
“It is your river. You would know better than me. To me it feels like a seam whose threads are giving way to the gray to which we all must soon return. My own world has been giving way to that same gray since the Uprising. If something is not done, it will fall before yours. Do you wonder, then, that I sought my mother’s help to mend this?”
Raindrops trickled down my neck and beneath my sweater. Allie looked uphill along the short path to the crossroads, which we both knew from our last journey together. She reached for my good hand. “You won’t let go?”
“I—” I couldn’t say I hadn’t let go so far. I’d let Nys take her, more than once. “Not if I can help it.”
Allie laced her fingers through mine. Rain spattered her nightgown and cloak. “I won’t let you go, either,” she said.
Together we crossed the stone platform. Elin followed at Allie’s other side.
“Stay away from the water,” I told her. “No matter what it says to you.”
“Do you think me a fool, who would go willingly to my death?” Elin asked. Rain beaded off her cloak, leaving it dry.
“Liza.” The River whispered my name as my bare feet touched the muddy forest floor. “You return at last, as all things must. Come here. Seek sleep. Come.”
That call pulled on some thread deep inside me, urging me toward the water. I pressed my toes into the mud, resisting as I had once before. The seeds in my pocket helped, their green tugging on that same thread, reminding me I wasn’t ready to sleep, not yet. Allie’s steps didn’t seek the River, either, not like last time. Perhaps her seed protected her after all, from this at least.
The wind blew on. The rain fell harder as we walked through the mud, soaking my sweater and leather pants. We had no rain gear, no means of making a fire. If the rain continued for long, we’d be in a fair amount of trouble.
The trees scarcely seemed to notice either us or the rain. They bent toward the River, as if anything else were of little concern. A clump of damp gray dust fell like late-winter snow from a branch. There was an empty patch in the forest beyond it, nothing but wet gray soil. We walked swiftly around it.
“Too long have you fought death’s current,” the River whispered to me. “You cannot save yourself. You cannot save those you care for. Seek rest, Liza. Seek darkness. Seek peace.”
“I can save them.” I ignored the icy raindrops that hit my face, focusing on fighting the River’s call, on holding Allie’s hand, on walking around another patch of gray. “I will save them.”
The clouds darkened. We came to a broken path among the trees—asphalt, those born Before called the black stone—and the River’s voice faded as we followed it uphill, making our way between yellow-leafed ginkgoes and poplars.
At the top of the hill, the path met another road, forming a huge crossroads filled with slabs of cracked black stone. “Well done,” I told Allie as we reached the crossroads’ center.
She fell to her knees and threw up.
I crouched by her side and handed her the wine skin. Allie swirled the liquid in her mouth, spit it up, and drank some more. Rain dripped from her hair and mine.
“Sorry. It’s just … the things the River said.”
“Like last time?” The River’s voice hadn’t made her throw up last time.
Allie shook her head. “I don’t want to say. Not yet.”
“Indeed.” Elin’s face was pale, and I wondered what the River had told her. “The light dims,” she said. “If we are to build shelter for the night, we must do it soon.”
To the west, thunder rumbled. We had little means of shelter. “We’ll gather dead wood,” I said. “Search for dead grasses to lash it together.” I scanned the forest around us. The crossroads was wide enough that no tree shadows should be able to reach us if we stayed near its center.
“A poor plan,” Elin said. “Allow me to suggest a better one.” She spread her cloak on the stones. It was still dry, as was her dress. “I am but a weaver, yet my power may be of some use here.” She moved her hands
over the cloak. The fabric shimmered and flowed, turning as liquid beneath Elin’s touch as stone had beneath Nys’s. When the light faded, Elin’s cloak had grown thin as old paper with none of the brittleness, a square of cloth fifteen feet or more across.
I reached out to touch it. It felt like well-woven wool, but the rain continued to roll off as if it were nylon from Before. I looked up at Elin, not hiding my admiration.
A ghost of a smile played across her lips. “I trust you can find wood enough to fashion this into our shelter?”
“I can,” I said, and headed into the forest to do so. Allie and I found some long straight branches, and Elin used them and more weaving to shape her cloak into a tent, with two rough walls to block the wind and a roof just high enough for us to sit beneath.
We huddled under it, Allie and me in our sodden clothes, Elin in her dry ones. The rain was quite heavy by then, and Allie had begun to shiver. Elin took two stones from her belt pouches and tapped them together. The larger began to glow with warm orange light. Allie and I took turns holding it, warming our wet skin and doing what we could to dry our clothes. We’d chosen as flat a spot as we could find, but rain trickled in along cracks in the rock beneath us.
“I cannot help with food,” Elin said. “The forest will have to provide that once the storm passes. I’ll not take food from my people for you. We struggle enough as it is. Toby—” She turned abruptly away to stare at the curtain of rain that fell from the edge of our shelter. It was full dark, and the flashes of lightning made the rain seem the edge of the world. I wondered who Tolven was to Elin, and how she would react if she knew he’d rescued us. I wondered if her people had truly gone as hungry as mine had since the War.
Allie’s shivering eased. She yawned as she cupped Elin’s stone in her hands. “Think you can take first watch, Liza? I’m kind of tired. I’ve healed so much. I know I need rest.”