Bones of Faerie03 - Faerie After

by Janni Lee Simner

  I didn’t want to leave him, but I wanted less to disobey him. I walked to Karin’s side, saw fear in her silver eyes. I’d seen Karin concerned, cautious, but never afraid. “I’m all right. Truly.” I let her take my good hand in hers.

  She pressed something into that hand. Seeds. The green tugging grew stronger, and I knew it for what it was: the call of seeds that wished to grow. For a moment more I longed to return to Nys’s side, but the seeds’ pull on me was stronger than Nys’s was. His glamour melted away like fog beneath sun.

  My stomach churned as I clutched Karin’s hand. An instant before, I’d wanted nothing more than to touch Nys, to be near him. Now I was sharply aware my knife did not hang by my side, for if it did, I’d have plunged it through his heart. The things he’d made me feel, when he’d touched my hand—

  I had no need of a knife to defend myself. “Go away, Nys!” I threw my summoning magic into that call.

  Nys frowned, but he remained where he was, and I knew that wasn’t his full name. Karin and Caleb were the only faerie folk I’d met who gave their full names to humans, a sign of trust and respect I’d not understood at first. Most faerie folk were cautious about sharing their true names with any but those nearest them, even among their own people.

  I swallowed panic down like bitter willow bark. I dared not let the fear that followed glamour weaken me. I drew my hand from Karin’s, keeping the seeds out of view as I slid them into my pocket, beside the mirror.

  The ivy leaves at Karin’s wrist were wilting, one by one. “The land knows me, now that the Lady is gone. I cannot fight it—you and Allie must leave this place.”

  “We won’t go without you!” Allie said as Karin pressed her hand toward mine and I took it. I’d been thinking the same thing. If something needed fighting, we’d help Karin fight it.

  “Liza, please.” Karin’s voice held steady, but there was something in her eyes, beyond their lack of focus, something wild seeking to break free. Whatever she fought, it was somewhere inside her. “I will not leave until I know you are both safe.”

  Of course we wouldn’t abandon Karin here. I looked to the standing stone. It grew bright, catching the moon’s silver glow. I stepped toward it, seeking the seer’s visions that would lead us safely home.

  “Oh, I think not.” Nys touched the stone an instant before I did, and as he did, I saw—

  Matthew, running toward Kate’s mirror, his grandmother right behind. The silvered glass shattered, sending shards flying. Matthew threw up his arms, mouthed my name—and then the image shattered as the glass had, and I stared at lifeless stone.

  Nys gave me a dark look. “So you see. Stone shaping and visions go together nearly as well as summoning and visions do. Come here, Liza.”

  The glamour in his voice was a velvet rope, pulling me toward him. The seeds’ pull remained stronger. I backed away, clutching Allie’s hand. She grabbed Karin’s hand in turn. Karin made whispering sounds as she rocked back and forth on her heels. Elin stepped toward her mother, looking uncertain for the first time.

  “There are many ways to control humans.” A rough smile crossed Nys’s face. “Allie. Come to me, please.”

  It wasn’t her full name, but for glamour, unlike summoning, it was enough. Allie stiffened and jerked free of my grasp. She dropped Karin’s hand and started toward Nys, feet shuffling through the ash as if she were asleep. I grabbed Allie’s hand again; she barely seemed to notice.

  Karin fell to her knees. “This is not right. This cannot last. Too long has death been held back—the seeds are not enough. Roots crumble, branches fall—run!” Karin toppled forward into the ashes. Elin ran to her side as Allie reached for Nys’s cheek, a slow, fascinated smile crossing her face.

  Karin began shuddering where she lay. Elin grabbed her shoulders and rolled her over. “Don’t you dare,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare leave me again.”

  Allie lurched free and threw herself toward Nys. I grabbed her before the stone shaper could. Elin wouldn’t let her mother die if she could help it, but no one here cared what happened to Allie but me.

  Karin’s voice rattled like wind through dry branches, nothing human in it. Allie twisted in my hold. I couldn’t protect them both, and I couldn’t fight Nys and possibly Elin while doing so.

  Nys kept smiling, and I knew he knew it, too. “Allie, child. Come here.”

  “Sorry, Karin.” I threw Allie over my shoulder, and I ran. My feet crunched over dead ash, kicking up clouds of dust. I’d come back. Somehow, I’d come back. Allie wriggled and pummeled my back and kicked my shins. “Let me go! I have to go to him!”

  I didn’t waste breath to glance back to see whether Nys followed. I put all my energy into running, weaving around more dead tree snags and ignoring the small rocks that cut my bare feet. The warm wind stole the moisture from my throat.

  Allie went limp over my shoulder. “Don’t let me go,” she whispered. “Please.”

  “I won’t.” I ran faster without her fighting me. Ash gave way to smoother stone.

  The ground shuddered, and emptiness gaped open beneath me. Allie screamed as we tumbled into the dark.

  I didn’t let go, not even when I crashed into more stone with a sharp snap. Like bone breaking, I thought, and then pain seared through my leg and hip.

  Just like that. The pain roared into a fire, burning all other thoughts away.

  Chapter 4

  I fought to breathe through the burning, to see, to move.

  “Hold still!” Allie cried. Numbing cold melted the fire away. I tried to sit up, and pain flared hot once more. Allie pushed me down onto my back. “I mean it!” Her hands moved along my body, lingering over my right hip and leg.

  My eyes were closed. I opened them. The dark remained thick as before. Light shimmered, faint and silver, gone before I could focus on it. Pain gave way to an icy pins-and-needles feeling that was intensely … uncomfortable. I let out a breath. I could handle uncomfortable.

  “That’s better,” Allie said. “I’m”—she laughed—“working in the dark, you might say. That’s okay. It’s not like I feel broken bones with my eyes. Here—” Her hands glowed with silver light, stronger than the shimmer I’d seen before. By that light I saw her pale, pinched face. “Oh!” A half grin broke through the worry as her hands flared brighter. “Well, that’s better, then.”

  Cold pulsed through my hip and leg. There was another jolt of pain. I hissed through clenched teeth, and then more cold took the pain away. I felt bones knitting together, itchy under my skin, and reached out to scratch at them without thinking. Allie slapped my hand away. Itchiness gave way to a dull ache, and the light flickered and went out. In the darkness left behind, I saw a faint gray shadow: Allie’s shadow, visible to me even in the dark, where nothing else was.

  “Sorry, Liza.” Allie’s voice broke on a sob, and her shadow arm brushed across her shadow face. “Even magic can’t stop setting a bone from hurting like anything.”

  “I’m okay.” I reached for her, but Allie pulled away. “Stop moving! The bones need time to get used to being healed so they don’t break all over again.” She ran her hands over the rest of my body, stopping at my feet. Light flared again as she healed the small cuts on my soles. We were in a small round stone room with no visible doors and a high ceiling that showed no signs of the hole we must have fallen through.

  “We’re trapped.” Allie’s voice, as the light faded, sounded terribly young.

  I wanted to tell her everything was all right, but no one with magic could lie. “Can you keep your hands lit?” We needed to know if there was any way out of here.

  “That only works when I’m healing, and there’s nothing left to heal. I’d have to—I mean, I could hurt you so you’d need healing, but I’d never do that! You know I wouldn’t.” Her voice took on a stubborn edge. “I’d rather stay in the dark.”

  I knew Allie well enough to also know there was no point telling her I’d willingly endure some extra scrapes and bruises if
they’d help us see our way free. “You’re sure I can’t stand yet?”

  “I wouldn’t say so if it wasn’t true,” Allie said severely.

  “All right. I need you to feel your way all along the wall for both of us, then. If there are any cracks, anything that might be a door, any handholds we can climb to examine the ceiling, anything that might lead to a way out, we need to know about it.”

  “Right. So we can get back to Karin.” Allie’s steps shuffled away from me.

  I didn’t want Allie anywhere near Elin and Nys. I wanted to get her safely out of Faerie and go back for Karin without her. I watched as her shadow moved around the room, thinking of how Karin walked steadily through the dark, day after day.

  With the ache in my hip fading, my thoughts had room to circle back to the way Karin had fallen, the way she’d lain shuddering on the ground—the way I had left her. You cannot imagine what the land says. What had Karin heard? Maybe Caleb would understand what had happened to her. Glamour wouldn’t touch him if he came back with me.

  “Liza? I don’t feel anything. It’s perfectly smooth, all the way round.”

  “All right.” I didn’t know any stone that formed itself into a perfectly smooth cave, not without magic. Nys’s stone shaping? Allie returned to sit cross-legged by my side. It was likely Nys who’d made the stone give way beneath our feet and who kept us trapped here now. The chances of either of us getting out of Faerie were pretty small. I brought my left hand to my face, shuddering at the memory of how Nys had brought feeling to the dead stone. I’d been as defenseless against Nys’s glamour as Allie, until Karin gave me those seeds.

  I fumbled through my pocket, around the plastic mirror case, now cracked, to find the seeds. Five of them—Karin had kept the last for herself. I drew one from my pocket, saw the small shadow curled within it.

  “Stay still!” Allie protested, but this time I ignored her to put the seed into her hand.

  Allie’s fingers closed around it. “Protection? Like Caleb’s leaf? Is that why you were able to run?”

  “I don’t know if it’ll work for you,” I said. Allie was neither a plant speaker nor a summoner. She wouldn’t feel the life in the seed like Karin and I did.

  “But it might?” Allie said.

  “It might.”

  Allie slid the seed into what must have been her pocket before she sidled up beside me. “You’re shivering, Liza.”

  It was cold underground. I hadn’t noticed. I sat up to put an arm around Allie, and this time she didn’t stop me. “You’re shivering, too,” I said.

  “I know. I—” Allie’s voice caught, steadied. “What Nys did to me. That was glamour?”

  “Yes.” My eyes searched the dark. I knew I wouldn’t hear Nys, or Elin, or any of the faerie folk coming, but I could see them as I saw Allie.

  “When he called me. The things I felt—the things I wanted …” Allie hunched over.

  “I know.” I smoothed her tangled hair.

  “No one should have magic like that,” Allie said fiercely. “Or if they have it, they shouldn’t use it. I can’t believe Caleb and Karin ever used glamour, not even during the War, no matter what they say. Karin.” Allie drew a troubled breath. “Do you think she’s all right?”

  “I don’t know.” The look in Karin’s eyes, the sounds she’d made … It is worse, so much worse than before, she’d said. Roots crumble, branches fall. I thought of clouds of ash and dust, of the stale scent in the air, of Karin saying she’d met that scent before, after the War. It meant the land was gravely wounded. What if the War and Faerie were where the crumbling began? What if humans did worse than burn people and trees when they sent their fire? I drew the mirror from my pocket. The glass within the broken case felt cracked as well. In the dark, it offered up no visions. I pried loose the largest shard I could find. A weak weapon, but I had none better.

  “I can feel it,” Allie said abruptly.

  “Feel what?”

  “The seed. It’s only a whisper, but there’s something in there. Something that has to do with my magic. That makes no sense. My magic isn’t for plants, only people and animals. But there’s a whisper of something human here. Like a memory.”

  “That’s good.” Maybe the seed would protect her after all. “Keep it safe.”

  “I will,” Allie said soberly. “I can feel other things, too. You need to know that. Remember the sickness in the air? The last time we were in Faerie?”

  “Radiation poisoning.” Even if they weren’t responsible for the crumbling, the fires my people sent did harm enough. Their poison remained in Faerie’s air long after the War was through, just as blood-seeking trees and raptors with poison in their claws remained in my world.

  “It’s better belowground than above, but it’s down here, too. The air is all wrong—I don’t know how the faerie folk have survived so long. They really are harder to hurt than we are. We won’t survive anywhere near that long, not unless—” Allie sighed. “We’re in an awful lot of trouble, aren’t we, Liza?”

  My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the dark. I’d never met darkness this deep. “I’ll do all I can to protect you.”

  “I’ll protect you, too,” Allie said. “I’m still your healer, and I’m not a little kid anymore. I’ll do everything I can.”

  Radiation poisoning was much more dangerous to heal than a broken leg. “Don’t do anything that puts you in danger. Promise?”

  “I’ll promise if you will.” Allie laughed a little, but then she sighed again. “Everything’s dangerous here, isn’t it?”

  Very close, Nys’s voice answered, “Indeed.”

  I scrambled to my feet, putting myself between Allie and that voice, ignoring the dull ache that returned to my hip. I saw no shadow to tell where Nys stood. “Show yourself.” I reached toward the voice, and my knuckles brushed smooth stone that hadn’t been there before.

  Rough laughter then. The stone melted away, and a shadow appeared before me. I lunged at it, mirror shard in my hand, aiming for what I hoped were Nys’s eyes. I missed, and the glass grazed skin before breaking in my hold.

  Nys’s fingers closed around my other hand, my stone hand. Fingers that hadn’t moved for five months wrapped obediently around his, and warmth tingled through my palm. I wanted to throw up. I focused instead on aiming my knee between Nys’s legs.

  Nys grunted, but that didn’t stop him from dragging me across the room to press my hand to the stone wall. Tingling gave way to white-hot pain, like broken glass being ground into my skin and blood. Fractured bones were nothing compared to this. I fought to pull free, but my hand was gone, melted into the stone. A low animal whimper escaped my lips.

  Allie’s shadow darted up beside me. Her cool touch took the pain away and cast silver light around the room, showing where Nys stood before me, still holding my arm, blood trickling down his cheek.

  “No, Allie.” Nys’s laughter had given way to anger cold as falling ice. “You will not waste your healing, not on her. Leave Liza be.”

  Allie stiffened, and I knew there was glamour in his command. Her hand fell to her side, and the light went out.

  Pain and fear rose in me, like a river near its banks. I fought them and grabbed Allie’s arm. I couldn’t let Nys’s glamour take her again.

  “Let Liza go!” Somehow, Allie’s voice remained her own. “You’re hurting her!”

  “I assure you that is not my intention. But if glamour does not touch Liza, I’ll do what I must to control her so that you and I may speak. It appears there are some things Elin has neglected to tell me about you, Allie.”

  My fingers dug into Allie’s nightgown sleeve. “What do you want with us?” I demanded.

  “With you, Liza, very little. It is the healer who concerns me.” Nys’s voice grew thick with glamour. “Come here, Allie. My people have great need of healers.”

  Allie fought my hold again, struggling to obey Nys’s words. Her voice was her own; nothing else was. The seed protected her, but not
all the way.

  The ground buckled. My feet slid out from beneath me, sending new pain knifing through my arm as it took my weight.

  Allie’s hand jerked away as I found my footing. Her shadow moved toward Nys. I grabbed for her, but they stepped out of reach.

  “Stop it!” Allie said. “Of course I’ll heal, if someone’s hurt. That’s what I do. Just let me go on my own. Please.” The last word came out quieter than the rest.

  Nys took Allie’s hand. “I’m sorry, Healer. I do not know why glamour leaves your thoughts free, but I dare not leave any human unbound. We learned, too well, the cost of letting humans run free during the Uprising. I will do what I must to help my people.”

  “Go away, Nys!” I screamed with all the force of my magic, knowing it wouldn’t work, knowing I didn’t have his full name, because magic was all I had and I couldn’t let Allie go.

  Nys sighed, as if I wearied him. “Karinna the Fierce may have worn her name openly in the Realm as a show of courage, but most of us are not so foolish. You are already a problem, Liza. I do not know how it is that you have pulled free of glamour entirely, but you might want to see to it that you do not create further difficulties. I do not need glamour to control you, as you have seen. Come, Allie.”

  Allie raised her head as she followed Nys across the room, her steps wooden. “You need to know,” she said. “I would do this anyway. Hurting Liza and taking me over doesn’t change that. Those are your decisions, not mine.” Her steps remained steady as they walked away, until stone must have flowed between us once more, because all at once they were gone.

  I’d lost her. Panic threatened at the edges of my thoughts. Nys could make Allie do anything now, anything at all. I had to go after her. I had to get away. I felt along the wall, to where my wrist melted into the stone. There were no cracks around it, no way of prying myself free. Flesh flowed smoothly into flat rock, as if they had always been joined. I grabbed my wrist and pulled as hard as I could. Fire roared through the hand I could not see, stealing my breath, making my feet give way. The panic slid up a notch. I fought the stone that held me, fought without thought, knowing only that I had to be free, no matter the pain, no matter anything.