Twenty
THE FAIR FOLK surrounding us stepped back. My knees buckled, but Rook caught me by the elbow before I fell and threaded his arm through mine. I wondered why no one was attempting to stop him, until I saw his face. I hadn’t seen him like this since the night he confronted me about his portrait. He blazed, fiercely incandescent, somehow less human than ever even with his glamour returned, projecting that if anyone came near us, he would strike them down on the spot. One advantage of their horrible fairy customs, I supposed: strength was everything, and with the iron gone Rook was the most powerful fair one in sight. More than that—he didn’t have anything to lose. Even Hemlock looked wary.
“Your hand,” I said.
“It will bleed quite a lot, I imagine,” he replied in a satisfied tone. “Can you walk? I need you close.”
Right, the plan. The plan in which Rook tore off his own finger and, apparently, challenged the Alder King to a duel to the death. What could possibly go wrong?
I squeezed my eyes shut, searching inside myself, evaluating my reserves. “I think so. Not for long.”
“Then let us go.”
Together we descended, my dress leaving a trail of petals on the uneven steps. When we reached the bottom, I looked back once. The riven oak from which we had emerged grew suspended on a balcony, its dark roots entangled around the platform and its branches halfway grown into the wall. I saw no door, no archway, no other entry anywhere. The Alder King’s seat of power could only be reached through the fairy paths.
We strode forward arm in arm. The straight avenue stretching down the center of the room was lined by tall pillars of the same sparkling, translucent stone as the walls and balconies. The stagnant heaviness to the air and the absence of any hint of sky alerted me to the possibility that despite the brightness, we were underground. As we passed the first pillar I saw a bark pattern on its surface and realized they were not stalagmites or carvings, but rather petrified trees preserved so long beneath the earth they had turned to crystal. I took a deep breath and leaned on Rook, conscious of the chamber’s unfathomable age, and the claustrophobic weight that crushed down on it from above.
The hall’s end was lost in a haze of dazzling light, impossible to look at directly. The Alder King could be seated, watching us approach. Or perhaps he was yet to arrive. I did not know.
Sound carried far here. It reminded me of a cathedral between choral movements, when everyone sat down, whispered, shifted, and flipped through the pages of their hymnals, filling the vaulted ceiling with a noise like hundreds of birds rustling their wings. Rook’s hard-soled footfalls echoed. I could even hear the enchanted petals dropping from my dress, whispering silkily against the reflective floor. Individual words and phrases jumped out of the blur of voices, sometimes indistinctly, sometimes as clearly as though they’d been shouted in my ear.
“Rook,” a baritone said, and it took me a panicked moment to grasp that it was a spectator speaking to his companion up on a balcony, not addressing Rook firsthand. “Did you—” someone else murmured, followed by the sharp, carrying sibilance of “kiss.” “Isobel!” a girl’s voice yelped, and my heart kicked against my ribs like a spooked horse.
“Pay them no mind,” Rook said, gazing straight ahead. “Pretend it is just you and I, walking alone. They are but the wind.”
With the way my vision blurred in and out, I almost could. “I never knew the wind had such an appetite for gossip.”
“You mortals, with your limited perceptions.” Though he didn’t turn his head, I felt his regard shift. A small smile touched one corner of his mouth. “Watch me.”
Showing off even now, I thought. But I couldn’t deny that a spark of excitement galvanized my veins and caught my breath in anticipation of whatever he was about to do. Cavalierly, still smiling, he raised his wounded hand and unclenched the fist he’d made of his remaining fingers. Drip, drip, drip. His blood spattered a trail across the floor. Someone gasped. Another cried out fearfully. Shoes stomped and shuffled as fair folk jostled against the railing for a better view. One woman seized the long curls of another and yanked her backward to clear a spot. In the brief gap I spied a silvery-blond head ducking past, its color a stark contrast to the rich chestnuts and auburns of the summer court. Gadfly? No, it couldn’t be . . .
The nearest pillar exploded in a cascade of sparkling crystal shards. Then the next, and the next, and the next, all the way into the distance. Living branches unfolded from their shattered husks, aflame with scarlet leaves. Roots bulged from the floor, splitting the stones in violent upheaval, sending cracks zigzagging in every direction that struck the corners and raced jaggedly up the walls. Screams rang out as chunks of masonry sheared away from one of the balconies and came toppling down in an avalanche of sundered rock, drowning out the tinkling of falling crystal. Residue filled the air, glittering like diamonds.
I stumbled over the broken floor, but Rook steadied me, helping me over a root that still grew, writhing and distending as it inched wormlike across the ground, spilling forth hairs. He did not favor his injured hand. He couldn’t afford to.
Unyieldingly, unstoppably, his autumn trees pressed against the ceiling and spread. Their foliage muted the hall’s blinding light into the jeweled tones of stained glass. Now, for the first time, I saw what awaited us.
The Alder King. He sat slumped forward on a throne elevated at the level of the highest platforms, vines entangling him against the wall like a heart ensnared in a web of arteries. His face, his beard, his robes, the throne, and even the vines were all the same pale, powdery gray, lifeless as marble, as though he had become part of the room itself. His sleeping countenance gripped me with a terror I couldn’t explain. Somehow I knew he wasn’t as lifeless as he looked. I felt his slow awareness turning toward us, as surely as a lighthouse beam circling in the dark. And oh, I didn’t want to see him wake up.
Rook squeezed my arm, and his next step hesitated a split second before his boot struck the floor. He’d felt it too. Unlike me, he couldn’t show his fear—his weakness. Glancing at his face, I found his eyes fixed on the Alder King with haughty, slightly disdainful anticipation, as though he were merely someone the prince planned to beat at shuttlecocks. But his confidence was fake. Just minutes ago I’d seen him slumped broken and pleading against the Green Well. By now I had witnessed him holding the pieces of himself together enough times to recognize the sight instantly.
I wished that just once I could tell him I loved him and it wouldn’t be a curse upon us both.
The hall had gone silent. Fair folk stared upward like children at the autumn leaves falling. The rubble was already softened by a blanket of foliage, as though it had collapsed long ago. In the newfound quiet, yellow ivy twined over the balconies and spiraled up tree trunks, and my dress fluttered against my legs in a clear night wind. Rook’s branches snaked closer and closer to the Alder King’s motionless form, blooming red.
One of the king’s fingers twitched.
Dust trickled from his antler crown, a thin stream at first, then a cascade as he raised his head. We were close enough now to see the powdery texture of it clinging to his beard. He blinked, revealing filmed-over, colorless eyes that wandered like an old man’s.
“Why do you wake me?” he said in a dry whisper. Though spoken low, his querulous words swept down the hall and scattered in every corner like a gust of dead leaves. Heat followed, and the smell of rot. Sweat broke out on my palms. “I have been dreaming . . . dreaming of ripe grapes, and a sunset reflected on the water . . . I wish only . . .” Puzzled, he glanced around at the vines that had grown over him, imprisoning him against his throne.
“I am here to challenge you, Alder King.” Rook’s words rang out, echoing. “Your endless summer has fallen to corruption. All can see it. Masterless fairy beasts roam the forest, and your own lands decay while you slumber. And tonight,” he added in a yet louder voice, angling his body toward the balconies with his injured hand still upraised, moss spiraling down his sleeve, “a mortal has destroyed the Green Well.”
Shouts followed his pronouncement. “No!” “So it is true!” “The Green Well!” “How will we make the mortals love us now?” Squabbles broke out on the balconies. A few fair folk sank to their knees, clutching the railing in exaggerated attitudes of devastation. They all went silent at a gesture from the Alder King that sent a curtain of dust arcing through the air.
“No. What you say is . . . impossible. The Green Well is eternal.”
Somehow, I found my voice. “Fair folk cannot lie,” I reminded the king, torn between my fear and a sudden curious pity for him. “The well is gone.”
His eyes narrowed. More dust crumbled from the webwork of wrinkles surrounding them, revealing patches of papery flesh. He looked down at me. The heat simmered. Every bit of skin touching my dress itched foully, and phantom grasshoppers buzzed as pressure mounted in my skull. That was all I was to him, regardless of what I had done: an insect crawling at the foot of his throne. He meant to kill me with the sheer force of his attention. And he would have, if Rook’s ensorcellment hadn’t stopped him.
The moment he realized I was immune to his magic and why, alarm and uncertainty sparked deep in his clouded eyes. “Her will remains her own.”
Rook showed his teeth in a smile that wasn’t a smile, looking so utterly mad I forgot to breathe. “Yes. Now come down and fight me, if you can.”
An indrawn breath. Then the throne room erupted.
Screaming ravens rushed inward from every direction, clotting the air so thickly they smothered the hall in midnight darkness. Their flight was a deafening thunder, drowning out the Alder King’s roar of protest, swallowing whole the fair folk’s surprised cries. A stinging assault battered my face. I coughed on feather fragments swirling about like chaff, only the warmth of Rook’s arm reassuring me he was still there. Between the beating wings I caught piecemeal glimpses of the chaos around me. A woman on one of the balconies clawed at her head as a raven thrashed, caught in her elaborate hat. Another tumbled off, pecked at by dozens at once. Fair folk flooded the stairs, attempting to escape the onslaught to no avail, fights breaking out between them as they trod on one another’s shoes and gowns. A fair-haired girl—Lark?—grinned while she kicked a man in the shin, and then turned toward me, seeking approval.
Fairy blood flowed. The fragrance of summer phlox overwhelmed me with its sickly sweetness, and I struggled to keep my balance as the world spun in a feathered maelstrom.
A towering shape reared from the darkness. Its antlers cut a swath through the ravens, scattering broken bodies to the floor. Rook spun to protect me from the thane’s hooves. At the same moment, a pair of cold hands seized my arms and yanked me away from him, pulling me flush against the nearest tree.
“Stop thrashing about,” Lark said into my ear. “Some of us are here to help you.”
I grabbed Lark’s wrist hard. “Rook doesn’t have a sword!”
“A sword?” She grinned. “Why would he need one?”
As it turned out, he didn’t. Rook ducked and whirled beneath the thane like a dancer, plunging his left hand upward into its chest. It froze and trembled all over. Autumn ivy burst from first its nose, then its mouth, and then its eyes, and rapidly spread over its body until it resembled a giant topiary. He wrenched his hand free, already crushing the ancient brown skull in his hand as he tossed it away. With a swirl of his coat, he neatly sidestepped the cascade of bark tumbling down. He gave Lark and me an assessing look. The ravens now surged around the three of us in a circle, an opaque black wall studded with glinting eyes, as though we stood at the center of a storm. Rook had his back turned when a second thane crashed through.
I cried out to him, but he’d already sensed it. In one smooth motion he dropped to his knees and slammed his palm to the ground, meeting the whirlwind of feathers already rising to engulf him. The thane’s antlers whistled through empty air, missing the large, purple-eyed raven soaring away. Rook vanished into the cyclone, one bird indistinguishable among many. Then he burst free near the ceiling, angling down, crooked legs extended, arrowing toward the thane like a falcon descending upon prey. Once more he disappeared. I strained for any sign of where he might have gone this time, and didn’t have to wait long. The thane listed first one way and then the other, its stumbling hooves crushing the rotten fragments of its companion, and then fell with an earth-shaking crash, disintegrating in a cascade of vegetation that tumbled far across the floor.
Rook strode free of the remains in human form, dusting off his sleeves.
“Did he really cut his finger off?” Lark’s voice held a note of grisly delight. “He did, didn’t he! I haven’t heard of anyone doing that before. It’s permanent, you see—his glamour won’t hide it—and the power won’t last long.”
I swallowed. “Is he . . . can he fight the Alder King?”
A horn blast shook the ground and vibrated up through my shoes. Time stopped. Or at least that was how it appeared at first, but then Rook stepped back, and I slowly raised one of my tingling hands just to make sure I could. The ravens encircling us hung suspended in midair, frozen midflight, unblinking. Not a feather stirred. The horn sounded again. And the ravens fractured like brittle glass and sheeted down, an obsidian cataract crashing at our feet.
The Alder King stood at the top of his platform. The vines had slithered off him; they were still crawling away across the back of the throne. He took one step down. A second. Each impact knocked dust from his body, and as he descended he shed the weight of centuries, as though a mantle of years slipped from his shoulders. An emerald robe revealed itself by inches, trimmed with dark, antique gold. His thick gray-shot beard was braided in places like an ancient warrior-king’s, fastened by golden clasps, and a signet ring glittered on his finger. Heavy brows concealed his eyes, revealing only the stern nose and merciless slash of a mouth I recalled from the engraving in the summerlands. Where was the flaw in his glamour? He had none.
All around us the other fair folk ceased fighting in midmotion, assuming the various strange attitudes of actors in a pantomime. I was dimly surprised by how many appeared to have been fighting not only the ravens, but also one another. Whether some were on our side, or whether the violence over trodden-on shoes had merely proven infectious, I could not guess. They crouched frozen, their claws at one another’s throats as the flowering vines and moss created by their own spilled blood grew over them.
Rook did not move. His back was straight and his face unreadable. My heart in my throat, I chanced a look at Lark, not liking the way the world blurred out of focus when I turned—this was not the time to start swooning like a storybook maiden. She stood frozen as well, staring at the Alder King with wide, glassy eyes as though hypnotized.
The king took another step down, looming in the corner of my vision, and that was when I figured it out. His size. His size was his flaw. He towered above the other fair folk, inhuman in his dimensions, a head taller than even Rook.
Finally Lark answered my question. “No,” she gritted out, the barely audible word squeezed from her lungs by sheer force of effort, passing between her still lips as an exhalation of air. “No one can.”
“I recall now why I sat down on my throne and did not rise again for an age.” The Alder King’s voice rolled over the chamber like thunder boiling over the horizon. The air grew heavy, crackling with latent power until the hair on my arms prickled and stood on end. “I grew tired of your squabbling. Your small lives wearied me. Wine . . . embroidery . . . trifles . . . why? You would claw your neighbor’s eyes out for a mouthful of dust. Yet dust is all around you. The whole world is made of dust, and always returns to it. There is nothing else.”
I must have mistaken the fear I’d glimpsed in his eyes. This being did not know fear. He felt nothing at all, I thought, laboring to raise my chin. Black spots swarmed before me like gnats.
“And now the Good Law is broken, and you have failed to mete out just punishment. For what reason does this one . . . and that one . . . yet live? It is no matter what the mortal has done. I do not desire,” he said, “to see either of their faces.”
He had almost reached the bottom of the stairs. I swallowed the bitter taste of ozone and fumbled for my bond with Rook, and into that shared silence I screamed at him.
He staggered as though a rug had been pulled out from beneath his boots. Then he shook his head and, to my dismay, gave the Alder King a crooked smile. The smile was too savage to be called charming. “What a fortuitous coincidence,” Rook declared. “I confess neither of us wanted to see your face, either. In light of these circumstances, I think it best we take our leave.” He folded his arm over his chest and bowed. “Good day.”
The Alder King’s compulsory return bow cut off his darkening expression.
“Quickly, to me,” Rook said, turning and holding out his uninjured hand. A wave of leaves crashed against him as Lark lifted me, hoisted me onto a stamping horse’s back, and pulled my arms around his neck. We took off in a bone-jolting lurch. Powerful muscles bunched beneath my cheek. Faces flashed past, gaping in surprise, shrinking away from the stone chips thrown up by his striking hooves. They stung my own legs, icy pinpricks of pressure without pain. I wondered if I bled.
We clattered up the stairs, Rook’s shoulders heaving as he conquered the too-small steps. The mirrorlike curtain of water grew closer and closer, reflecting his charge in rippling silver, and my own too-pale countenance as I clung astride. He was going to jump through it. I braced myself as best I could.
“This was your plan? Oh, Rook,” I mumbled half-conscious into his warm, rough mane. What he was doing was the last thing anyone would expect. “You’re running away.”