But I haven’t forgotten the very last thing Kale said to me: Do not return until you’ve found them. This is very important, Ryn. Tharros’ power will be unleashed upon the world again, and this time, we need to destroy it.
I asked him why he wasn’t going on this mission himself, if it was so important. He said the Seelie Queen didn’t want him disappearing on some weapon hunt she believed was futile.
Seems the Seelie Queen and I agree on something.
If Kale is certain Zell’s going to unlock the chest of power soon, then shouldn’t I be at home getting ready to defend the Guild with everyone else? Violet’s contact at the Unseelie Palace may have already told her when Zell’s planning to attack. The Guild might be preparing for battle right now. And where am I? Wandering the wilderness like a fool looking for something that doesn’t exist.
But you have orders, a voice at the back of my mind says. Orders from a senior guardian who reports directly to the Seelie Queen. That’s not something you want to disobey.
I’ll give it two more days. That makes ten days. Surely that’s enough? If there really is no Order hiding out here, Kale can’t expect me to search forever, can he?
I want to see Violet.
The desire strikes suddenly, sending an ache through my chest. The longing to see her hits at least once an hour. Sometimes I want to hold her so badly my arms ache. Part of me is surprised she hasn’t shown up to demand why the hell I disappeared. I told her in the note not to find me, of course, but when did Violet Fairdale ever listen to me?
After running both hands through my messy hair, I stand. Two more days. Just two more days of silence and loneliness. Then I’ll be back at her side.
*
I climb the peak again. The one that looks most like a dragon’s tooth. After a few hours of steady climbing, I start walking in a wide zigzag. I don’t want to miss these mysterious three rocks again. The chilly air makes the sweat on my forehead sting like ice. Tilting my head back, I see snow capping the peak. Thank goodness it doesn’t snow further down at this time of year. That would make this pointless mission even worse.
I stop when I see a slim rock pointing toward the sky. Now that is what I imagine when I think ‘tall rock shaped like a finger’. Too bad there’s only one. Yup. One. Like this mountain is flipping me off. I start laughing, then stop when I realize how crazy the echoes sound.
I continue up. After several more hours of climbing, I figure I’ve gone too high. Seriously, those three rocks are not here. Maybe I need to get to the other side of this peak. Perhaps Kale left that part out of the instructions. Climb straight up for half a day. WALK TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PEAK. Look for a grouping of three tall rocks like fingers in a row.
Maybe. I’m doubtful . . . but maybe. I’ll have to try that tomorrow.
I head back down. The light fades quickly after the sun slips behind the mountains. I won’t make it to the bottom before dark. Not a problem. I’m a faerie; I can make camping on a rocky, sloped surface into a comfortable experience.
I drop my pack onto the ground. Darkness creeps closer as I consider what spell to start with. Transform my pack into a sleeping bag? Enlarge the tiny bit of food I have left? Create a fire that won’t die until I tell it to? Through the half-light, I see the finger-pointing rock I laughed at earlier. I find myself wondering if maybe, just maybe, there were once two other rocks beside this one. I stand up and head over to examine it, taking my pack with me.
I can’t help the half-groan, half-laugh that escapes me when I reach the rock that’s taller and narrower than I am. “Are you kidding me?” I say out loud. “This is what I’ve been combing the mountainside for?”
Here they are. The three fingers in a row. It’s just that two of them are broken, leaving nothing but a patch of jagged stone at ground level on either side of the pointing finger. I crouch down and examine the base of the middle rock. I brush away loose dirt with one hand while creating an orb of light with my other hand. The white glow illuminates an arrow carved into the stone. I run my finger along it as I consider using a simple doorway spell. It probably wouldn’t work, but—
Light explodes from the rock. A second later, I’m hanging upside down in midair. Pain tears through my body. I try to grasp at my magic, but it slips away like water through my fingers. I writhe about, but I can’t escape the pain and the invisible force holding me upside down. After willing myself to calm down, I notice the shape of a person silhouetted against a doorway of warm light.
“Who are you?” he asks. My first instinct is to try to read his emotions, but it doesn’t seem possible to feel anything other than agony.
“From . . . the Guild. I have . . . the Seelie Queen’s . . . token.” I squirm around and slap at my right back pocket for the ring Kale gave me. It’s a one-of-a-kind piece, like all the Queen’s jewelry. Her symbol’s engraved in the metal beneath an oversized emerald. The ring falls to the ground. The man bends and picks it up.
“You’re a guardian?” he asks.
“Aargh . . . yes.” I keep as still as possible so he can see the markings on my wrists.
He snaps his fingers. I hit the ground. The pain evaporates, but I’m left feeling like a troll ploughed through me. “I’d . . . I’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge,” I say, “about the two missing rocks. Because it’s taken almost nine days of searching to find this place.”
“Nine days? You’ve done pretty well then,” the man says, “considering the point is for us not to be found.” I sense relief and a hint of excitement as he reaches for my arm and pulls me up. “Come inside. We’re desperate to know what’s going on, but we weren’t sure if there was anyone left out there who still remembered us.”
Still feeling shaky, I grab my pack and follow him through the rock’s narrow doorway and into a large sitting room. It’s like a faerie home, but concealed within a rock instead of a tree. “What are you talking about?” I ask.
He seals the doorway behind us, then turns to me. “The faerie paths. It’s the only hint we’ve had that something’s gone wrong. Well, that and the tremor.”
I stare at the man, getting a good look at him for the first time. His anxious eyes are a very pale blue, like the strands that run through his blond hair. Like all adult faeries, he looks to be in his early twenties. But his eyes have that aged look I see on those who’ve been around longer than several decades. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was sent here to find the Order of the Guard and the weapon they’re hiding. I don’t remember any tremor.”
His confusion matches my own. “It happened about a week ago. If you’ve been searching this area for nine days, you would have felt it.”
I think back to a night when I woke to find myself rolling out of my blankets and down a slope. The ground felt as though it was moving beneath me, but by the time I got to my feet, all was still and quiet. I’d put the incident down to bad dreams and restless sleep.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “And what was that about the faerie paths?”
His frown deepens. “You haven’t tried to use them?”
“No.” Unease squirms around in my stomach. I wish this guy would get to the point. “What’s happened to them?”
“After we felt the tremor, my brother walked down to the foot of the mountain. He opened a doorway to the faerie paths and found a raging storm inside. He couldn’t go through.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “What? How’s that possible?”
“We don’t know. We started imagining the worst. A battle, maybe. A war going on somewhere.”
A war going on somewhere.
Violet. My family. Calla.
I blink. I step back, my eyes searching the room for . . . I don’t know what. “I have to get back. I have to . . .” I reach inside my jacket and pull out my stylus. I rush to the nearest wall, writing the words before my stylus even connects with the—
“No! Don’t open it in—”
Crack!
I’m thrown back against a
n armchair as a fork of lightning shoots across the room and strikes a table, splitting it in half. Icy bullets of rain pummel my raised arms. Wind pins me down. I’m almost blinded by continuous flashes of lightning. The wind begins to diminish, then vanishes along with the rain and lightning. I lower my arms. The doorway has closed.
The faerie gets up from the floor, wiping rain from his face. “That was entirely unnecessary. Weren’t you listening to me about the storm?”
I was, but . . . “But my family!” I climb to my feet. “I have to get back to—”
“You can’t. I’m sorry, but there’s no way for you to get to them.”
I push my hands through my wet hair. “I need . . . I need your amber. Or a mirror. Something I can use to contact someone.”
He shakes his head. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything like that.”
“You—what?”
“Communication with the outside world would make us vulnerable.”
“But what if you need . . . I don’t know, something?”
“We’re completely self-sufficient here. We don’t need anything.”
This is un-flipping-believable. “Are you telling me you haven’t left this mountain in centuries?”
“If we want to know what’s happening out there, one of us will journey for a day from here, then take the faerie paths to a city or town. We can’t take the chance that someone might follow us back through the paths to this hiding place.”
“It’s not possible for someone to follow you unless you’re stupid enough to let them hang onto you!” I yell.
He remains calm as he says, “Do you know that for sure?”
I’m about to tell him that of course I know that for sure, but something Violet told me not too long ago echoes through my mind. Did I tell you about the time Zell followed me through the faerie paths without having any contact with me? And now I’ve opened a doorway inside the hiding place of the weapon that’s been kept secret for centuries. The creator of that storm could be on his way here right now to destroy it.
Okay, stop flipping out and think about this. I lower myself into the armchair and cradle my forehead in my hands. I don’t actually know what’s happened. There may not have been any attack yet. This could be Zell’s way of isolating everyone to make it difficult to coordinate a defense for when he does strike.
Emotions that aren’t mine dig their fingers into my chest. Anxiety, irritation, curiosity. I hear footsteps, followed by another male voice. “What’s going on in here? Who is this?”
“A guardian from one of the Guilds. He’s been sent for the weapon.”
I raise my eyes and meet the gaze of a man bearing a close resemblance to the faerie who let me in. He nods his head slowly and says, “After centuries of waiting, the time has finally come.”
Even though the rest of the fae world is probably consumed by storms and battles, the two guys standing in front of me seem happy to waste time on introductions. The faerie who let me in is Tryce, and the guy who just entered the room is his father, Yale. He’s the one in charge here. After I’ve shown Yale my guardian markings, I try to get to the point. “One of the Queen’s closest advisors heard rumors of the weapon you’ve been guarding ever since Tharros was defeated. The youngest Unseelie prince now has the chest containing Tharros’ power. We know he’s going to unlock it soon—if he hasn’t done so already. We need the weapon that can destroy that power. That’s why I was sent here.”
Yale sighs, then motions for me to sit down. “The Queen’s advisor obviously didn’t hear the whole story.”
Great. Why is there always another obstacle? “What part did he miss?”
“The weapon will do you no good. There is only one person who can use it.”
I throw my hands up. Why can’t someone just give me the bottom line here? “And? Who is this person?”
“We don’t know,” Tryce says.
I stand up and start pacing. This whole mission has been a waste of time from the start. Now I’m stuck here with no way of getting home. Unless I start walking, which would take weeks. Or perhaps I could get hold of a pegasus . . . I stop pacing and cross my arms. “I know you’ve spent your whole lives guarding this thing, so forgive me for saying this: Your weapon sounds pretty useless.”
“I understand your frustration,” Yale says, “but that’s the way it is. After Tharros was separated from his power and killed, the power was captured in a chest. The Order of the Guard was formed to protect the power until it could be destroyed. The head of the Order at the time, a man who had crafted weapons for centuries, received a prophecy one day while he was creating a sword.”
My weary mind conjures up an image of a parcel arriving with a tag on it that says Prophecy. I press my lips together and try not to laugh.
“As the words came to him, he etched them onto the blade of the sword,” Yale continues. “That is the sword we’ve been guarding for centuries. It’s those words that say only one person can use it.”
“So . . . can I see this sword?”
The two of them lead me through the house, past bedrooms, a large dining room, a library, and several closed doors. We come to a spiraling staircase, which takes us down to another level. I see a room that looks like a smaller version of the Guild’s Training Center. Another room contains an enormous oval-shaped pool. At the end of a passage, Tryce and Yale stop in front of a blank wall. They each place a hand on it and wait for several seconds before the wall vanishes.
I follow them into a darkened room, bare except for a glass case in the center. The case is lit and appears to be sitting on air. Inside the case, resting on a cushion, is a sword. The hilt is inlaid with sapphires and engraved with ornate patterns. Etched into the shining silver blade are tiny words.
“Can I take a closer look?” I ask, stepping toward the case. I have a feeling that if I touch it, an alarm will go off or I’ll lose a hand or find myself hanging upside down in midair again.
“Certainly,” Yale says. He places three fingertips on one side of the glass. It glows briefly before vanishing. “You can pick it up.”
With one hand beneath the blade and another beneath the hilt, I lift the sword carefully. “So this is what’s supposed to save us all,” I murmur. I bring the sword closer to my face and read the prophecy’s words out loud. “‘Two halves in one have more power than a whole. The fae world will bow beneath his mark. Only the sword can stop him, and only one can wield the sword: the Star of the high land. She is hidden, but the finder will find her. She will break the whole in half. By the strike of the sword, and the death of innocence, evil will be laid to rest.’ Okay. Pretty cryptic.”
“Do you understand now why we don’t know who can use the sword?” Tryce asks. “We don’t know anything about either the Star or the finder.”
“Actually, the finder part makes some sense to me,” I tell them as hope kindles a small flame within me. “I know someone who can find people. Anyone, anywhere. That is—” fear grips my heart and threatens to smother my hope “—if she’s still alive.”
“Really?” Tryce says. “You know the finder?”
“Well, I don’t know if she’s the finder the prophecy mentions, but she’s the only one I know. I’d say that’s a good start.”
“That’s more than a good start. I imagined us guarding this useless thing until the end of the world.”
Yale sighs. “It’s good to know you’ve always been wholeheartedly committed to our cause, son.”
“Hey, I’ve never—”
“Right, so, I’m leaving as soon as possible,” I interrupt loudly, hoping to dispel the mix of anger and annoyance I’m feeling from the two men. “On foot, since there’s no other way. And obviously I’ll take the weapon with me.” I hope that isn’t going to be a problem for these guys.
“We’ll go with you,” Tryce says immediately. His anger vanishes, quickly replaced by excitement.
Yale nods. “Yes, that way we can continue to guard the weapon.”
“You don’t trust me with it?” I ask.
“Trust has nothing to do with it,” Yale says. “Our life no longer has meaning here if we have no weapon to guard. We may as well come with you and fight whatever new evil has been unleashed on our world.”
“Right, okay.” Makes sense, I suppose. “So . . . you know how to fight?”
“It’s not like we have much else to do here,” Tryce says. He takes the sword from my hand and returns it to the cushion. The glass case appears around it once more. “I’ll inform the others. We’ll leave as soon as everyone’s ready.”
“Others?”
“Yes. The Order has eighteen members.”
And here I was imagining only two guys protecting a weapon that could save the lives of thousands. “There are eighteen of you, but only one person came to see who was knocking at the door? What if I had overpowered you?”
Tryce laughs. “You obviously didn’t see the other six who were out there watching you squirm upside down.”
So I embarrassed myself in front of seven people instead of one. Fantastic. I cross my arms. “I have one more question, Tryce: If there are eighteen skilled fighters living here, how did a young guardian girl manage to sneak in and steal the chest containing Tharros’ power?”
*
Angelica’s theft of the chest is apparently an embarrassing story no one wants to talk about. After Tryce disappears to inform the Order members about what’s going on, and after we wait for the six patrolling the mountainside to return, we finally get going.
Our group of nineteen moves quickly, navigating through the dark almost as easily as we would through daylight. The Order members don’t say much. Normally I’d be fine with that, but right now I’d give anything to be distracted from the thoughts that keep tormenting me. Thoughts of the terrible things that could be happening right now to the people I love. I keep telling myself that Violet and my mother and father are entirely capable of protecting themselves. I just hope Dad managed to get Calla to safety before anything could happen to her.