No. Beneath pain and fear, a small part of me remembered I could not afford panic now. I forced myself to stop fighting, and I listened for the ragged thread of my breath, remembering Karin’s lessons. Breathe in. Breathe out. Again. And again. My breath steadied. The pain and the fear didn’t go away, but they no longer controlled me. I kept breathing, counting out the time. Ten breaths. A hundred. I might yet have a chance to save both Allie and myself, but only if I kept my thoughts clear.
I tested the limit of my good hand’s reach, feeling every bit of wall and floor I could get to. The stone was smooth all around. I snapped my mirror open against my hip, taking the plastic case in my teeth to feel for more shards of glass. My fingers traced a spiderweb of cracks, none of the shards among them large enough to serve as a weapon.
Five hundred breaths. A thousand. Light flickered at the edge of my sight. I turned as far as my hand would allow. The light came from a glowing purple stone, carried by a boy with clear hair tangled as willow branches, approaching through a stone tunnel that hadn’t been there before.
My broken mirror caught the boy’s light. It flashed bright into my eyes, and in that flash I saw—
Mom clutching Caleb’s hands. “I’ve birthed children without magic before,” she said. “I can do it again. What I can’t do is walk far enough or fast enough—find them, Kaylen. Bring my daughter home—”
Caleb running through a storm-tossed forest, Matthew a wolf at his side. The sky was bruised gray-green, and wind lashed at branches that hissed as rain flew from their leaves. Caleb stopped to put his hands to the surface of a rippling lake. “It is no good. The wind is too strong. We must continue on, toward the Arch—”
A woman I did not know, a faerie woman with bright eyes and a long twisting braid that brushed the ground behind her, also running, through forests I did not know. A ragweed vine lashed out to block her way. She stopped to give it a long, wry look, and the vine drew back, letting her pass—
The vision faded as a voice shouted, “No yelling!”
I jerked at the sound, pulling on my trapped hand, dropping the mirror. The tangle-haired boy grabbed my face. His silver eyes glared at me. “I said no yelling!” His glowing stone lay on the floor, filling the room with purple light. Across from us, a tunnel stretched into the distance, if only I could reach it.
I focused on the boy, who, like Elin, looked the same age as me but was probably older. His sleeves were torn, and angry red scars ran along his arms. There was something wild in his eyes—it reminded me of what I’d seen in Karin’s eyes, before she’d collapsed. “I wasn’t yelling.” I spoke gently, as to a trapped animal.
“Not you.” He released my face to grope at my pocket. “Them.”
I pushed his hand away, moving my arm to shield pocket and seeds. Those seeds were all that kept him from being able to glamour my thoughts away.
“Why so loud? Why so green?” The boy snarled, as if he were a wild animal in truth, and lunged at me.
I hooked my leg behind his ankle, sweeping him to the ground. Heat tore through my stone hand. The light showed, too clearly, the way my wrist melted into the wall.
The boy looked up from where he landed, sniffling like a hurt child. “There is no green,” he whined. “There is no loud. There are only gray whispers, whispers that slide between skin and thought, make people say you’re crazy. Not crazy. Not. The Realm crumbles. No one stops it. Why?”
“I don’t know why.” I watched, waiting for him to attack again.
The boy began to weep, with a low moaning sound like plants when rain soaked into their roots. He ran his fingers along his arms, nails digging deep, drawing blood.
“What’s your name?” I asked, not expecting him to give it, knowing I needed to try for any weapon within reach.
“Tolven.” He looked up, and his eyes narrowed, as if suspecting some trick. “You are human. Humans sent the fire. Humans killed the trees. They screamed when they died, so loud—they scream no longer. They whisper of wilting and death.” Soft, wet wind sounds wove in around his moaning. The only people I’d ever heard talk in the language of trees were plant speakers. Tolven stood, held out his hands. They were streaked with blood and soil.
Before I could test the name he’d given me, another light lit the tunnel. Nys strode toward us, one of the stone links of his belt glowing. Allie followed at his side, a water skin slung over her shoulder. The girl’s steps were stiff, the command that moved them clear, but her eyes were defiant. She flashed me a tired smile, and I let out a shaky breath. She didn’t appear to have been harmed.
Nys’s sharp gaze fixed on Tolven. He strode forward, grabbed Tolven’s shoulders, and turned the boy to face him. “If you have hurt him in any way, Liza, there will be no further kindness from me.”
“You’ve shown us nothing of kindness so far,” I said. By the light, I could see scars beneath Nys’s loose hair, as if the left side of his face were wax held too near the fire. I’d known humans enough with burn scars, but on Nys’s delicate features it seemed more wrong, like cracks in the crystal from Before that was meant to be perfect.
“Whispering hurts,” Tolven whimpered. He pressed his hands over his ears, buried his head against Nys’s shoulder.
“Hush, child.” Nys’s voice was low, soothing. More scarred skin showed at the sleeve of his tunic.
“Where’s Elin?” Tolven’s arms bled, staining his tattered sleeves. “I want Elin.”
“Elin remains above. She will return when she may. Come.” The stone shaper guided Tolven to the mouth of the tunnel, stopping to look back at me. “Allie’s healing has been of much use to us today.” Nys touched the wall. Ice gripped my trapped hand, and then I stumbled forward, the hand free, clenched back into its half-fist. Numbness faded, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache.
“I know more of kindness than any human who has not witnessed a world’s dying can understand.” Nys’s voice was cold. “I leave you with drink. If the healer continues to cooperate, I will bring food as well.” He turned to lead Tolven away.
That tunnel was our only way out—too late, I grabbed Allie’s hand to run after them. Stone descended like a liquid curtain between us. I pounded it with my good hand, but the stone held, leaving Allie and me trapped once more.
Chapter 5
Allie laced her fingers together, pulled them apart, and laced them together again, as if to prove she could move of her own will. Together, apart, together, apart—she couldn’t seem to stop. I grabbed one of her wrists, stilling it.
She looked up at me, brown eyes wide. “I’m all right. Nys didn’t make me do anything I wouldn’t have done without him. He only made me heal.”
Tolven’s purple stone lit our prison. Would Nys call that kindness, too? “It’s not okay. Nys had no right—”
“Stop!” Allie wore boots beneath her nightgown now, and a cloak over it, both too big for her. “It’s bad enough, what he did. Don’t make it worse by reminding me how bad. Don’t.” Allie took the water skin from her shoulder, eyes as intent upon the movement of her arm as they’d been upon her fingers, and offered it to me.
The drink within was fruity and alcoholic. Wine, I realized, though I’d rarely tasted it and was more familiar with my town’s medicinal whiskey. Only a plant speaker could grow the fruit for wine safely. The liquid, which was clearly watered down, soothed my parched throat. The air was so dry, even underground. I looked at Allie. She looked away. This wasn’t all right, no matter what she thought.
I gave the skin back to her. “We should search the room again, while we have light.” We paced the room together but found nothing that might lead to a way out. At last I sat with my back to the wall. Allie set the glowing stone and wine skin in front of us before she sank wearily down beside me.
I kept my dead hand carefully in my lap. I wouldn’t let Nys melt it again. “You need sleep after a healing,” I told Allie. “I’ll keep watch.”
Allie laced her fingers back together, stopped herself
, and pressed her hands firmly against her thighs. “The healing isn’t done. Nys will be back. I don’t want him taking me over again while I sleep.”
“I won’t—” I couldn’t promise to stop Nys from using glamour again. I was no more able to protect Allie now than I’d been with my hand stuck in the wall. Helplessness and anger brought a sour taste to my mouth. “Allie, what did Nys make you heal?” A faint hope: might he let us go, when the healing was through?
Allie twisted a lock of loose hair around her fingers. “What do you think?”
“Radiation poisoning?”
“They call it fire fever here. There’s so much of it. I only had the strength for two patients—the worst of them—though there were more than a dozen in the room. It’s a good thing Caleb taught me a little about how to heal fire fever after he saved your mom. It’s so much trickier than other healings. A year ago I couldn’t have done it.”
“Why can’t their healers do it?” They’d have more experience than Allie.
“I don’t think the faerie folk have any more healers. Maybe they all died in the War. I hope they all died during the War, because if they didn’t, they probably died healing afterward. That would be bad.” She twisted her hair tighter and tighter. “I’m not stupid, you know. I understand how important rest is, but I don’t think I can sleep, and even if I do, sleep will be worse than staying awake, because if I dream …”
“Maybe you’ll dream of home.” If Nys were here right now, I’d go for his eyes again, no matter the risk. If he was going to hurt someone, he should have hurt me. I felt the green seeds in my pocket, protecting me still. What use were they, if I was the only one they protected? Surely the quia tree hadn’t given me seeds just for that.
The only seeds I’ve known before with such strength and will to life came from the Realm’s First Tree. Karin’s words—but if I worried about Karin now, too, I might crumble away beneath the knowledge of all those I couldn’t keep safe. I must tell you that story, and soon, Karin had said.
Allie had twisted her hair around her fingers, so tightly the skin turned white around it. I put my hand over both of hers, stopping her. She looked up at me, asking for—what?
“You know Karin’s story,” I said abruptly. “The one about the First Tree and the quia seeds.”
“Well, sure, but—”
“Could you tell it to me?” Maybe telling the story would take Allie away from this place, at least for a little while, the way Mom’s stories once did for me. If I couldn’t take her out of here entirely, I could do that much.
“Now?” Allie narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” I unwrapped her hair from around her fingers. “But I want the story, too. Anything we know about the seeds might help later.”
Allie rubbed her fingers where the hair had dug in. “I can’t tell it as well as Karin or Caleb.”
“That’s okay. Just tell it as best you can.”
“All right. I remember how Karin started it, at least.” Allie tugged the ribbon from what remained of her ragged braid. “She said the story was from when Faerie was new, and the human world that would follow little more than a dream. Dad says that can’t be right, because humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years and Faerie isn’t older than that, but Karin says there are many ways of measuring time. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that when the story happened, magic was way stronger than today.”
Allie’s words echoed a little in the stone room. “Shifters could choose any shape. Speakers understood plants and animals and fire and wind all together. And summoners …” Allie looked up at me. The purple light gave the circles under her eyes a bruised look. “Summoners weren’t limited to calling the shadows in other living things. They could control their own shadows as well, sending them wandering outside their bodies even while they were alive.
“But Karin says not everything was better in those days, because while faerie magic was stronger, their bodies were weaker. Faeries didn’t live much longer than humans, and all sorts of things could kill them too soon.” Allie shuddered. “They were so sick, Liza. The people Nys made me heal. All he had to do was ask. Of course I would have healed them.” Allie stared at her hands. “It was hard not to keep trying to fight his glamour, inside at least, but fighting didn’t work. It only made it worse.”
“The story,” I said gently.
“The story.” Allie worked the tangles from her hair as she spoke. “The story begins with a summoner—Rhianne was her name—who could control her own shadow. And it begins with a speaker, but I don’t remember his name. The speaker and the summoner were deeply in love. Of course they were, because that’s how these stories go. Together they walked the forests of Faerie, the summoner calling the things of that world to them, the speaker listening to their voices and telling her what they said. But they were too easily distracted by each other’s words and presence.” A small grin tugged at Allie’s face, the first I’d seen since she returned. “That means kissing. You know that, right, Liza?”
“Yes, Allie.” I kept my voice as grave as I could manage. “I do know that.” I suspected it was far more than kissing Karin meant.
“You would,” Allie said. “You and Matthew both.”
I gave Allie a level look. Her cheeks flushed. We both laughed, but my laughter stopped as I thought of Matthew and Caleb, running through wind and rain to reach us. I would have told Allie about that vision, but what if Nys was listening again?
“So one day while Rhianne and the speaker were distracted”—Allie gave me a meaningful look—“a hunting cat saw them. Hunting cats were much bigger than they are now, and this cat’s claws swiftly found the speaker’s heart. I hate this part. Because while Rhianne used her summoning to send the wild creature away, she wasn’t fast enough. The speaker’s heart and breath stopped, so fast neither the summoner nor any of Faerie’s healers could bring him back, because even then magic wasn’t always enough, no matter how strong it was.”
Allie tugged a particularly stubborn tangle. “Rhianne’s grief at losing her speaker ran so deep. The summoner stopped talking, nearly stopped eating. Months and months later she had a daughter, and once her daughter was born, she decided she was done with life and love and with everything, which is the saddest thing I ever heard. Rhianne left her daughter and her people and her body behind, and she sent her shadow wandering, which was stupid, because that meant she was all alone with her grief. Rhianne wandered far and wide, through all of Faerie, while her people waited and watched over her body and hoped maybe one day she’d come back.”
The tangle wouldn’t give. Allie let it go. “Eventually Rhianne’s body grew old and died, because faerie folk died younger then, like I said. Her flesh melted into the soil, and the tree, well, the tree ate her, like trees did, even Before. It was only after that that Rhianne’s shadow returned, her grief used up at last. She searched for her body with her magic but found only the tree. And—this is the strangest part. Rhianne sent her shadow into the only shelter she could find for it, the tree’s bark and branches and leaves. The tree didn’t fight her. Maybe it couldn’t, or maybe it recognized her, after eating her skin and bones and all. Karin thinks it welcomed her. No one knows, because this was so long ago. All we know is that Rhianne’s shadow and the quia tree’s shadow became all jumbled together, and no one could tell, after that, where the woman ended and the tree began. They were the same.” Allie leaned against me. “I’m not sure what that means, Liza. Are you?”
I thought of Matthew, wolf and boy at once. “I think it means their shadows were tangled together. Like a shifter’s shadows.”
“It was only after that that Rhianne’s daughter came to the tree where her mother had died.” Allie pressed her fingers against her eyes, as if to keep them open.
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “Go ahead. Sleep. I’ll wake you if anyone comes.”
Allie hunched in on herself. “I sound all
stupid and scared, don’t I?”
“It isn’t stupid to be scared when the danger’s real. And the moment I hear anything, I’ll wake you. I promise.” I could at least do that much.
“All right.” Allie sighed, a sound troubled as the wind before a storm, and shifted to rest her head on my thigh. It took a while, but eventually her eyes closed, and her breath relaxed into sleep.
I kept watch, listening for noises in the dark, long past when the purple light dimmed and went out.
Chapter 6
It was smell, not sound, that warned me of Nys’s approach, the aroma of some roasted root vegetable. I nudged Allie awake as purple light flickered in the dark and Nys stepped out of another tunnel that hadn’t been there before. I put myself between him and Allie, gauging the distance to that tunnel. The ache had left my hip and leg. We might have a chance, if we ran.
Nys followed my gaze and raised an eyebrow, as if my thoughts of escape amused him. He touched the wall, and the tunnel closed. He wouldn’t have done that if he truly believed escape impossible.
“I said I would bring food.” Nys held the bowl out to us.
Allie grabbed my arm as she backed away, pulling me with her. The amusement drained from Nys’s face. “Eat it. Or must I enchant you to make you do even this small thing?”
Allie’s grip tightened, but then she let go and stalked forward. Not under glamour—the anger in those steps was every bit Allie’s. “Give it to me. I can eat on my own.”
Nys handed her the bowl. “It is good to see one of you thinking sensibly. Humans are fragile enough when they do eat.”
There was no fork. Allie shoved a pale white tuber into her mouth with her fingers and chewed, glaring at Nys all the while. I thought of stories from Before, about the dangers of eating faerie food—but surely the food wasn’t the greatest danger here.
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