by Ryan Graudin
“Look, I know this will sound . . . strange. But that dream I told you about this morning. I think someone sent it to me. They were trying to warn me that this was going to happen.”
“And this someone is on the Isle of Man?”
“Under it. In a prison for Fae.”
“Wait—” The princess sits up straight in her seat. “What? A prison?”
“There’s a maze of tunnels under the island. Mab used it to trap her enemies and anyone she disliked.” I give her the short version. I’m starting to squirm against the leather seat, watch the road into town for headlights. We shouldn’t stay here too much longer.
“And you think one of these prisoners has answers?” Anabelle presses. “You think they know where Richard is?”
I can only hope this trip is something more than grasping at straws and dreams.
“Something like that. We should get going.”
“Right then.” Anabelle flips down the Jaguar’s vanity mirror and rakes her hair out of her face, back into a tight coil. She smudges sparkle and kohl from her eyes. A few flicks and swishes and she’s a clean slate again. Repelling chaos like a stainproof tablecloth.
She finishes, turns, and looks at me. Ready. “Let’s go sailing.”
Twelve
The Ad-hene are waiting.
Sixteen shadows, sixteen flares of silver light winking over the iron-dark waves. Calling us to their jagged coastline. The scar-marks draw closer with the current and Anabelle’s secondary-school sailing skills. With every wave which brings us in to shore, I feel a new layer of their uniform magic. Earthy, raw, yearning.
The last feeling must be mine, I realize, as the princess ties the boat off. A yearning for lost things, as empty and cold as the wind licking these stones. The steps have already been sculpted for us. As uneven and toothy as wolf fangs.
“I’m not going to lie,” Anabelle whispers as we start our climb toward the Ad-hene’s flickering lights. “I’m already a little creeped out.”
“Let me do the talking.” I push ahead of her.
Alistair stands at the front of the group. Half-lidded and head tilted, as if he’s about to nod off into dreams. But sharp black eyes cut behind those lids: quick and questioning.
“Lady Emrys. We were not expecting you. Titania sent no sparrow.”
I stare down the queue of scar-lights. The exact same pattern—tangling and worming, silver and changing—sixteen times. Most of the Ad-hene’s faces are too far or dark to see. But a certain pair of eyes snares mine.
Kieran. He’s standing just behind Alistair, second in line. Watching me the way he did when we last stood on this cliff. Something about his stare, just behind its gray, winter sky hardness, makes me look away.
I clear my throat, find my voice. “This is quite a welcome for an unexpected visit.”
“Your auras called to us, from across the sea. We do not get many visitors.” Alistair’s dark eyes slide over my shoulder, where Anabelle stands on her tiptoes, trying to watch without being watched. “You—”
Fifteen other gazes shift, lock onto the princess in a single motion. Kieran’s eyes narrow—there’s a flicker in them I can’t fully read. Surprise, familiarity, then nothing.
They stare and stare at her. Anabelle—the princess who handles paparazzi and press with such cool—starts to squirm. “Me?”
“You’re not a Frithemaeg.” Alistair lets the observation linger on the air.
“Guess that makes two of us,” the princess quips back.
“But you’re not completely mortal either. Nor a faagailagh.”
“Of course I’m mortal.” Anabelle shivers. “Now if we could please stop talking about fitzgathers or whatever, and get on to finding my brother that would be bloody lovely.”
“Your brother?” The leader of the Ad-hene blinks. His stare flows back to me: smooth, powerful, dark as a deep sea current. “Why are you here, Lady Emrys?”
“I wish to revisit the Corridor of the Forgotten,” I tell him. “To speak with the prisoner there.”
Alistair turns to the sheer cliff-face, breaks it apart with a single spell. The stones split open and stale air sighs out of the Labyrinth. It whispers past my cheeks, laced with the strange spice of the Ad-hene’s magic. It’s bitter and biting, like ground pepper.
“Follow us,” the leader of the Ad-hene says before he blends into the dark of the tunnels. The Manx spirits move as one being, swift and rushing. Anabelle and I have to run to keep up with the sixteen scar-lights.
Despite the extra shine of the Ad-hene’s marks, the Labyrinth feels even darker now, its tunnels more winding. As if all this time I’ve been away, it’s been growing, sinking deeper into the earth. We turn and twist together, footsteps echoing. The sound reminds me of the throb under Richard’s chest: bum, bum, beat, beat.
Richard. I try not to think about him because every time I do it’s like a lance to my heart. Sharp and stabbing.
But once the thoughts start, no matter how fleeting (the memory of his voice, the feel of his hair under my fingertips, that smile), they will not stop. They tear through my soul like an avalanche.
Where is he now? Is the blood magic rising, burning in his veins? Is he seeing only darkness too?
“It’s a lost cause, talking to Guinevere.” It’s not until Kieran speaks that I realize he’s beside me. Matching me step for step. “Her mind is scrambled. Gone.”
“Wait,” Anabelle stumbles. “Did you say Guinevere? Guinevere as in the queen who cheated on King Arthur with his best knight Lancelot and single-handedly destroyed Camelot?”
“Not quite single-handedly . . . ,” I start to say when Alistair halts. The glow on his arm grows unbearably bright. It strips everything bare, reveals cells, twisted runes, and solid bars. The ruin and rot of this dark place.
Guinevere is waiting for us. Her face is so small—so birdlike and wasted—it fits easily through the gaps in the bars. That needle-point chin is tilted to the side.
I stop and stare at this woman. The only other creature in the world like me. A faagailagh. The only other soul who could possibly understand how I’m suspended, dangling so cruelly between these two races. Who knows what it’s like to lose the love of her life.
“Step, step! Pitter, patter!” She mewls like a kitten. One hand lets go of the bars, stretches out toward me. “Up, down. To, fro.”
I lick my lips. “Lady Guinevere.”
At the sound of her name, the former Fae cackles. “Ladies-in-waiting! There’s more than enough. One lady waiting. Waiting a long, long time!”
“Holy . . . That’s Guinevere?” Anabelle’s face is ghastly under Alistair’s worming light. “She’s . . . old.”
Guinevere’s laugh dies. Her next words are a reverent hush. “The sister of a king. Round and round it goes. In circles. Across the sea and back again.”
“How does she know who I am? She can’t even see me.” The princess shudders. At the same time I move closer to the bars, keeping a careful eye on those yellowed nails.
“I found the dreams,” I tell her.
The hallway falls eerily quiet. Sixteen scars fight and flare against the dark—showing me how Guinevere’s mouth is shut, lips drawn pencil thin to hide rotting teeth. Her one hand is tight against the bars and the other keeps pointing. Accusing.
“You knew what was going to happen. You tried to warn me. . . .” I watch the faagailagh’s face carefully. Those wrinkles and many folds of splotched skin stay still.
“Where is he?” I reach out, grip the same bars as Guinevere. I force myself to look straight into her eyes. Lose myself in their blank, blizzard white. “Where’s Richard?”
Her free hand drifts down to my breastbone, two nails tapping lightly against my skin. “There’s no map like the heart.”
“Where is he?” I ask again, trying my hardest not to flinch away. “Who took him? You know! You have to know!”
“You know!” Guinevere rasps my own words back at me: a shriveled echo. �
�Remember! Remember!”
I don’t care that Guinevere’s nails are still creased against my chest, or that it’s my face against the bars now. Just a breath away from hers. I only care that Richard is gone.
“Tell me!” I’m screaming. “Who took him? Where is he?”
The faagailagh’s mouth opens, but then her eyes bulge wide. A sound rises from her throat like a dog wheezing against a leash. A tongue lolls over her lips, purple and swollen.
I watch her and feel a strange, distant twinge deep in my chest. Magic.
The same magic I felt in the cell just a few meters away from here. That mingle of old and new. The same magic I felt in Trafalgar Square before the world went to hell . . .
Small bubbles spill from the edges of Guinevere’s lips, so much like sea foam. Her voice rasps, managing only a few broken syllables before it cuts off altogether.
“What’s happening to her?” Anabelle gasps behind me.
“It’s a spell. . . .” My throat feels thick. Guinevere is still thrashing in her cell, like a stranded fish desperate to get back into water. “Someone’s keeping her quiet.”
I turn to the lights. The Ad-hene are all queued along the back wall: silent watchers. Both handsome and grotesque. Like gargoyles. Unmoved.
Alistair is the stillest, that weary look set on his alabaster face as he watches the cell. “Many times we’ve tried to ask her about the escape. Every time she chokes up like this.”
Guinevere bends double in her cell, like a marionette cut from its strings. Brittle hair sweeps the bare floor, gathering dust. The once-Fae starts to cough—the sound is almost as rough as a Black Dog’s howl.
“Can’t you help her?” Anabelle asks. “There must be some way to lift the spell.”
“For one with so much magic in her veins you do not seem well versed in it.” The princess stiffens, but Alistair plods on, unfazed. “This magic isn’t of the Fae or the Ad-hene. I would not know where to begin. And in helping her I would only make it worse.”
“Circles. Back again. The sea is circling. Bright, bright water.” Guinevere stops coughing. She clutches her neck again. “Like a noose.”
“What sea?” I ask.
The faagailagh shakes her head. “Riddles are all I have. They couldn’t touch the dreams though.”
“Who couldn’t touch the dreams?” I’m all the way to the bars now, cheeks pressed tight into the metal.
Guinevere’s eyes flare wide again, tiny whitewashed planets suspended in the rot of her face. Her head keeps shaking, tufts of hair whip back and forth, back and forth. Those gnarled roots of hands keep clutching her throat. Nails digging deep. The skin there grows suddenly dark: a thick, oozing burst of red.
“Guinevere!” I shout her name, but Arthur’s bride doesn’t seem to hear me. She’s thrashing, falling over herself.
And I feel that magic again. Taunting my fragile senses through the bars. Ebbing and fading. I’m close to the answer. So close. But the spell’s grip is strong, made of impossible knots. Maybe, if I still had my magic, I could find a way around it.
I look over at the cell next to Guinevere’s, where I first felt this complicated signature of magic. Where I first knew something was very, very wrong. The trail which leads to Richard is right here in front of me. I just don’t have the means to follow it.
But the Ad-hene do.
I look back to the queue of stony faces, pick out Alistair.
“Your king is gone then,” he says. Dry, factual.
Of course he’s not surprised. The Ad-hene knew this was coming. They tried to warn us . . . tried to help.
“He was taken this morning,” I say.
“And you think this has something to do with the one who escaped?” The Ad-hene nods at the empty cell, where chalk runes litter the wall like cave drawings.
“I know it does.”
Sixteen silver-lattice maps sear into my eyes. Strung out like garden party lights, welding-torch bright. Tears have started to cloy my eyes, trickle down my cheeks, but I don’t look away. Those marks: they’re the only reason Titania refused the Ad-hene’s help. The only reason I’m not sitting on a loch’s shore, fingers wrapped inside Richard’s.
And now Titania is gone. Richard too. Only the marks remain, bright as winter stars.
The Ad-hene are my only option. My only hope.
“The last time I was here, you offered the service of the Ad-hene,” I remind Alistair. “The magic that’s choking Guinevere. Could one of you track it?”
Silence. Even Guinevere’s whimpers have faded. All of us watch the whitewashed leader as he closes his eyes.
“Our offer to track the prisoner still stands,” Alistair says finally. “The Ad-hene are nothing if not bound. Kieran will assist you.”
If Kieran is surprised, he doesn’t show it. He looms by my side— still—as if he were a cast-iron masterpiece planted on a London street corner. His mark flares like Polaris.
Anabelle shivers next to him. A part of her face plays blue against Kieran’s mark. The Ad-hene’s flint eyes tear from his leader to the princess.
“Aile.” A second, softer light springs up from Kieran’s hand. Fire licks across the creases of his palm as he offers it to Anabelle. “Take it, Princess.”
The orange light ripples over her face as she stares at the fire, uncertain.
“It won’t harm you,” he tells her. “It only looks dangerous.”
Anabelle stares at the bundle of light for a moment longer before she grabs it and tucks it to her chest. Her shivers cease.
“It’s not an easy thing you’re asking,” Kieran tells me. The false fire blooms behind his eyes as he looks back to Guinevere’s cell. The faagailagh leers against the bars. A patch of blood pools bright at the base of her throat. “This magic . . . It’s old. Strong. Angry. If I help you find its wielder . . . I do not think it will end well.”
“I’ve fought old magic before,” I tell him.
“Yes. Before. But now . . .” His eyes flicker back to the fire in the princess’s palms. She’s entranced by the burning sphere in her hands. It dances in her eyes too, revealing all their terror and wonder.
But now I’m a faagailagh. A fire without flame. Not dangerous.
“I’m not asking you to fight for me. Just help me find the trail.” That’s all I need. A trail. As soon as I find proof that the wielder of this magic was in London, I can go to Titania’s court and show her I was right: magic was behind Richard’s disappearance. Then the Frithemaeg will be forced to keep their oath and save the king.
I’ll get Richard back.
Alistair’s magic tugs across the corridor, pulling Kieran’s attentions back to him. Silent orders hum between them.
“This is a chance to prove our loyalties,” Alistair finishes aloud. “Go and make the Ad-hene proud, Brother.”
Kieran bows, stiff and perfectly hinged at the waist. He turns to me.
“I’m yours,” he says.
“Round and round it goes. A widening gyre. I flipped wrong. Remember.” Guinevere’s words are a defeated mumble—drained of life and strength and sanity—as she melts into the shadows of her cell. “Please remember. You are not powerless.”
Nonsense and gibberish. Too far from the truth to even be considered a riddle. I feel more powerless than ever as I watch her retreat. Back to her ageless, timeless doom.
“I think I’m going to have nightmares for the rest of my life,” Anabelle mutters as soon as we climb back into the sailboat.
If only she knew how true her statement was. My steps sway as I clamber on to the boat and collapse against one of the cushions, reminding me how tired my body is. Soon it will need sleep. I will have to let the nightmares in again.
“How does a place like that even exist?” The princess scales the cliffs with her eyes.
“The Isle of Man is one of the great wells of magic.” Kieran leaps into the boat, landing on the deck with a litheness I wouldn’t have attributed to his kind.
“A well?” Anabelle asks over her shoulder. She’s already scuttling across the deck of the sailboat, unlashing knots and winding levers back.
“Yes. Parts of the earth where magic flows more naturally. There are several such places in this kingdom. Stonehenge. Glastonbury. Loch Ness. The Cliffs of Dover. Back when there was more magic in the land, spirits were born in these places. Every spirit sprung from the Isle of Man is an Ad-hene.”
“So what about the tunnels and the cells? Where did those come from?” Anabelle tugs the winch she’s adjusting extra tight.
“The very first Ad-hene loved the earth so much they did not wish to leave it. They created an underground kingdom of caves and tunnels. It was a majestic place: walls glittering with mica, lakes so deep you could never reach the bottom, long halls which caught your voice and carried it for miles . . .
“More and more Ad-hene came into existence. The island soon became too small for our numbers, but none of the Ad-hene wished to leave. The oldest Ad-hene found a way to make room for all of us. They cast a spell to make the tunnels endless. Ever-changing and growing.” Kieran stretches out his arm, giving us both a clear view of the map on his skin. Impossibly complex, crawling like a living organism. Around and around those severe muscles. “All of us were marked with maps to navigate it.”
The Labyrinth of Man is a spell. The biggest looped spell I’ve ever seen. I listen to Kieran’s story, watch the light shift restless on his arm—and realize just how much I don’t know about the Manx spirits.
Anabelle looks back at the cliff, where fifteen lights twinkle like Christmas tinsel against the scoured gray dawn. “What happened to the others?”
I think the same question as I count the marks again. Sixteen. Even when I used to come here on prisoner transport duty there weren’t many more than that. Certainly not as many as Kieran speaks of.
So what happened to all of them?
The Ad-hene looks up at the marks as well. Obsidian curls cluster his face, frame its blankness. He doesn’t answer—I’m not sure he can. His mouth is fused like stone.
The princess stops pulling the winch. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”