Silver in the Bone, page 30
That, at least, got a laugh out of her. “I do love ponies.”
“I never would have guessed,” I said. “But listen, I have some contacts with sorceresses I’ve worked with in the past. I can’t promise that any of them will be willing to help, but it would only take one to search the archive for your mother’s Immortality.”
“You really think they might?” Neve asked. She leaned forward, a look of false shock on her face. “Tamsin…are you being hopeful?”
I pretended to shudder. “You’ll have to come with me. They’ll be a lot less likely to kill me for my insolence if you’re there too.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged,” she said, trying to smother her smile. “Assuming we make it back to the portal alive.”
“Assuming.” I studied the stack of books in front of her for a moment and pulled one over to me. The Healer’s Journey.
“What are you doing?” Neve asked.
“Maybe it’ll help to have a fresh set of eyes on the problem,” I said.
“I’ve already been through that stack.”
“Then I’ll go get some more,” I said. “Or just sit here and admire you for being so smart and studious.”
Neve laughed and slid another book across the table. “This one’s an account of the shapeshifting creatures of the Otherlands.”
My chest clenched. “You’ve been researching Cabell’s curse?”
“Yes, and Olwen has too.”
I opened the cover of the leather-bound volume, relishing the smell of old parchment. “But you haven’t found anything useful?”
“Not yet.” Neve paged through the book in front of her. “But I had the thought that maybe he’s another type of being, and his human form is the curse.”
I stared at her, an endless, ringing pressure expanding in my skull. At my silence, Neve looked up from her page. “Did you ever explore that possibility?”
“No,” I croaked.
“Well, I guess that’s a point in favor of getting a fresh set of eyes on things,” Neve said. I must have looked skeptical because she quickly added, “It’s just a theory. I have no proof either way.”
I was still shaking my head as I gripped the edges of the book.
“Would it really be so bad?” Neve asked. “It would bring him a measure of peace.”
“Breaking his curse would bring him peace,” I insisted.
Neve’s eyes softened as they met mine again. “I can’t begin to tell you what it feels like to know that you’re meant to be something else than what you are—it gnaws at you every day, even if you refuse to acknowledge it, until there’s a void in you that nothing but the truth will fill.”
“He’s human,” I told her. He had a human heart and a human mind.
And if he didn’t, it would mean he belonged somewhere else, in a different world, and a part of him might always yearn to go there, even if he never knew why.
The minutes gathered into hours. Each turn of the page brought me deeper and deeper into the manuscript I was poring over; I was so captured by my reading, it took someone clearing their throat to pull me away. When I looked up, it was to find Emrys standing in the library’s doorway, his face like thunder. Cabell hovered behind him, visibly confused.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Neve emerged from her own reading trance, blinking. “Is it the soil?”
“Oh, the soil beneath the stones was fine and the seeds are well on their way to sprouting, thanks to a little infusion of magic from Deri,” Emrys said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “But I think I found something. Something else.”
His eyes were overly bright, almost feverish, contrasting harshly with the sunken shadows beneath them.
“Something else implies that I’m already behind,” Cabell said. “Anyone want to fill me in? I tried to get here earlier, but Sir Bedivere needed help.”
“Speaking of Sir Bedivere…,” I said. Cabell’s expression fell into pure horror as I quickly, and quietly, told him what Emrys and I had found last night.
“So what’s Bedivere’s connection to all this?” Neve asked.
But Cabell, of course, had understood. He remembered Nash’s stories about Arthur’s journeys to Annwn as well as I did. “Sir Bedivere was said to be one of the knights who accompanied King Arthur to Annwn. But I thought the cauldron they recovered had something to do with food?”
“See!” Neve said.
“Could you try fishing for some information about it?” I asked. “Just…feel him out.”
“Feel out an immortal knight of the Round Table,” Cabell said, rubbing his hands over his face. “Sure. Why not.”
Emrys had been all but vibrating with impatience as I caught Cabell up, and it was clear he’d reached the end of his fuse. “Can we please get going? It’s really important you see this.”
“Have you slept at all since we got here?” Neve asked, cocking her head to the side as she studied him. “Maybe you should take a nap first. I have a potion that could knock you out in a few seconds. It tastes like bat hair, but, you know, night spells from night creatures and all that.”
Emrys sent a pleading look my way, and a part of me, one I didn’t want to acknowledge, went soft. I’d been steadfastly avoiding the memory of our interlude in the wardrobe, but now it came rushing back.
“All right.” I sighed, closing the book. “Whatever it is can’t be worse than last night.”
* * *
It was clear from the emptiness of the tower that the hour was even later than I’d thought. The doors to the sleeping hall were partly shut, but I could see well enough inside to spot Olwen, Flea, and Arianwen huddled up nearby.
Emrys led us down to the tower’s entrance, waiting for Betrys and the others on watch to turn their backs before we darted across the courtyard. I surveyed their efforts from the day; half of the stones were gone, revealing a dark belly of soil that had been carefully sowed in neat little rows.
Cabell glanced at the guards overhead one last time. “Coast’s clear.”
Emrys motioned for us to follow him to the armory.
The small building was surprisingly well lit and, if I had to guess, had likely once been a gatehouse. Now the air was perfumed by the animal fat and linseed oil used to polish tools and blades.
Beside me, Cabell wrinkled his nose. “What now, Dye?”
A battered full suit of armor, blood-red with rust, kept silent watch over the room. Emrys moved Neve and me into position directly in front of it. He watched us, waiting for something, and a moment later, I felt it. A cold draft of air exhaled from the floor beneath us. Neve jumped as it ruffled her skirt.
“What is that?” she asked.
“That was my question as well,” Emrys said. “Anyone want to make—”
“No one wants to make a bet,” I told him. “Or play a game. We are tired.”
“All right, all right,” he said. He lifted the visor of the rusty armor and reached into the emptiness behind it. He pulled on something—hard—and the floor rattled beneath us.
Cabell offered a steadying hand to Neve and me as the section of floor beneath us lowered.
“What in hellfire…,” he breathed out. My whole body tensed as the platform sank into the darkness of a tunnel—as ancient and crudely hewn as the tunnel beneath the great hall.
“Oh, wow,” Neve said, trying to see down the length of it to the shadows ahead.
As we stepped off, the floor rose again of its own accord.
“Should we be worried about that?” I asked faintly.
“There’s another lever down here to lower the platform,” Emrys assured me. “I spent a precious hour of my life finding it.”
As the platform slid into place, blocking any trace of light from above, I realized what I’d forgotten in all our hurry.
“My workbag,” I said, pressing a hand to my forehead.
“Have no fear, ladies and gent,” Emrys said, pulling on his head lamp and clicking the light to turn it on. “I’ve got us covered.”
Beside me, Neve closed her eyes and drew in a gasp like the last soft breath before a kiss. Her lips were moving, but it was a moment more before I heard the song: the words that had no translation, the humming that seemed to be born from the deepest chamber of her heart. It harmonized with her echoes on the stones around us, until Neve’s voice became a thing of pure power, and the power became her voice.
The melody was otherworldly and filled with promise, like a revelation. Wisps of pale blue light gathered at her fingertips. She brought her hands to her mouth and blew on them, scattering the shivering lights like dandelion seeds down the length of the tunnel. Their glow made me feel like I was floating in one of the pools in the cavern below.
“Incredible,” I told her. And she hadn’t needed a sigil, let alone her wand, to do it. She had done what had felt natural, and the result was astonishing. Neve beamed, tracing a finger around one of the lights.
With what dignity he could muster, Emrys reached up and turned off his head lamp. “Well, that works too.”
“Where are we going?” I asked. “I can’t imagine you just wanted to show us this paradigm of a cold, drippy cave tunnel.”
“It’s really more of an ancient path into the bleak never-dawn,” Emrys said, starting down said ancient path. “But it is indeed drippy and cold.”
The damp passage was short, but it reeked of the isle’s decay in a way the other tunnel hadn’t. The air was thick with moisture, and we churned up foul odors with our every step. My ears strained, listening beyond our footsteps and the dripping water that seeped from the walls.
At the end of Neve’s trail of lights, I could make out a grotto of some sort. I was so focused on it, I overlooked the antechamber that opened into it.
Dread brushed along my spine, cold and quivering, as I turned to my right. There, an iron-grated door barred entry to a crypt; through the rusted metal, I could just make out the shape of three plain stone coffins. It was a lightless crevice, lacking any color or adornment beyond the names chiseled into their lids.
The one closest to me read Morgan.
“Can we assume this is the Morgan we know as Morgan le Fay?” Emrys asked.
“Yes,” Neve said, her voice hushed. “Olwen told me about this. While the surviving sorceresses were exiled, High Priestess Viviane didn’t know what to do with the bodies of the priestesses who died getting revenge on the druids. She decided not to bury them in the earth, to keep them from being reborn, but couldn’t bear to burn them.”
I nodded, feeling something heavy settle at the base of my throat. After everything, the High Priestess had still loved her sisters in spite of their betrayal. She hadn’t left them to rot into the ground, the way I had with Nash’s remains.
“Someone’s been down to visit them,” Cabell said. He slid a hand through the bars, pointing at the bouquet of dried roses placed at the head of Morgan’s coffin.
Neve squinted, trying to see for herself. “That’s impossible. Olwen said she wasn’t even sure where the crypt was.”
“She might not be,” I said. “But someone remembered.”
“I agree this is all very unsettling and mysterious,” Emrys said. “But believe it or not, this isn’t what I wanted to show you. Follow me.”
Past the antechamber, the stench thickened until I could barely draw breath without becoming queasy. We stood on a wide stone platform, overlooking a section of the tower’s moat. It ran through the length of the grotto, its murky sludge filtering through grates.
“This,” Emrys said, “is why I brought you down here.”
I glanced back over my shoulder and stilled. Neve stepped in closer to my side, her breathing turning ragged.
The platform spread out around us, filling the cavernous space. There, on either side of the entrance we’d come through, were cages.
Four of them, made of crudely shaped iron. Two looked as if they had been torn apart from the inside, the bars twisted as if made of twine, not metal. A pile of silver bones waited in the third.
And the ground around the fourth’s was painted with dark, dry blood.
That very same blood had most likely been used to daub the symbols on the ground near Neve’s feet. There was something desperate, or frenzied, about the way they’d been painted.
Cabell noticed the markings too, and gently pulled Neve away from them. His nostrils flared as he took in the scene.
“So,” Emrys said, leaning against one of the cages. “Anyone want to venture a theory?”
“Maybe they kept a few of the Children down here when they first started turning, to see if the dark magic was reversible?” Cabell suggested.
“I thought that too, but look,” Emrys said, moving into the cell with the bones. With a grimace, he picked one up—a very human femur, not coated entirely in silver, but mottled with specks of it, as if the transformation had somehow been interrupted. “Is it possible someone was experimenting on turning people into Children—that it took time to perfect whatever curse they used?”
“No,” Neve said sharply. Something about the way she refused to look at us tugged at me. “There’s no one here capable of that kind of spellwork—to will those creatures into being would require a truly dark soul.”
There were few areas of magic the Council of Sistren restricted, resurrection and other death magic among them. The threat of accidentally—or intentionally—creating violent ghosts was all too real.
“That’s true for the magic you use,” I said. “But what about Lord Death’s magic?”
Neve said nothing, and suddenly, a new suspicion bloomed in me.
“You recognize those sigils on the ground, don’t you?” I asked.
“Neve, if you know something…,” Cabell began.
Finally, Neve turned back toward us. “I saw it in a book I wasn’t supposed to be looking at in Olwen’s infirmary—it didn’t have any sort of title on it, and she’d hidden it behind some of her jars, and I really didn’t mean to betray her trust but—”
“You are talking to three Hollowers,” Emrys said. “This is a judgment-free space when it comes to snooping.”
Neve looked like she might be sick. “It’s a druid mark. Like sorceresses, they used a written language to control the magic Lord Death gave them. It’s meant to sever a soul from a body.”
My whole body recoiled.
“You’re sure?” I asked. “Absolutely positive?”
“Beyond a shadow of a doubt,” she rasped out.
My head pounded, blood storming through my veins.
“Then we’re right,” Emrys said. “Someone in Avalon is still using death magic. Whatever was done to the isle was done intentionally. The only question is why. Because they’re sympathetic to the druids, or because they serve Lord Death?”
My heart sped until my body felt strangely hollow. An overwhelming nausea swept through me, and I had to lean against Cabell to keep from bending over.
“You okay?” he asked, gripping my arm.
I waved him off, but he didn’t let go.
“And you think Caitriona is behind it?” Neve said, shaking her head. “You’re piecing all these so-called clues together, but what’s her motive? Why would she destroy Avalon?”
“Maybe Lord Death promised her something in return,” Emrys said, “to finish what the druids started.”
“Caitriona isn’t behind this,” Neve said. “There’s no way.”
“I can see that you hate this theory,” Emrys said, “and believe me, I do too, but I don’t think we can discount the idea that Caitriona is controlling the Children, or at least working with whoever is.”
“How do we even know they’re being controlled?” Cabell asked, scratching at the stubble on his jaw.
“They’re still out there, doing nothing,” Emrys said. “Not hunting, not digging, not scouting, just waiting. Waiting for an order.”
“There’s just no way,” Neve said, but her words became muddled in my ears, then thinned as Emrys replied, and I felt my consciousness slipping…
My body felt as if it were in an icy coffin, without even a scant bit of space to move in. The cavern around us revealed itself, blanketed in mist, but a horn pierced it. The glossy black eyes of the unicorn stared back at me from the other side of the moat’s sludge. For a moment, we only watched each other, and I didn’t dare breathe for fear of breaking the spell.
But still, it shattered.
The unicorn reared up, and the vision shifted behind my eyelids, each detail more horrific than the last. The unicorn faded back into the mist, and in its place came hairless gray scalps, then long, spidery limbs. Claws embedding themselves in the wet stone.
Tamsin? I thought I heard my name from somewhere nearby.
Children rising from beneath the thick mire of the moat, dragging themselves onto the platform, galloping on their strange, spidery limbs down the tunnel, toward the hidden entrance—
I gasped, my eyes snapping open.
“Tamsin?” Cabell had me by both shoulders, his grip like iron as he shook me.
“What’s wrong?” Emrys asked.
The bile was too thick in my throat to speak. I shook my head, dropping into a crouch.
“Come on,” Neve said as she and Emrys helped me stand again, supporting me from either side. “Let’s head back up and get some fresh air. I can get Olwen—”
I shook my head fiercely, but when my eyes slid shut, I saw that same scene play out again. The Children’s rancid breath fanning over my face…
I forced my eyes open to find Emrys’s face hovering nearby.
“You look like you’re about to be sick,” he said. “Neve’s right, we should go.”
“When are you going to realize that I’m always…” Neve trailed off, looping one of my arms over her neck. She looked around us, searching the shadows. “Do you hear that?”
