Chantress

by Amy Butler Greenfield

  I considered this. “What about the eggs?”

  “They haven’t hatched yet,” Nat said. “I quizzed Sir Barnaby, and he said he’d stake his life on it.”

  “But he’s only going by rumors.”

  “He has better sources than that,” Nat said. “He’s our spymaster.”

  “But what if you’re wrong about the time, and it’s later than you think? What if we get caught in the Pit at sunset?”

  “If it’s that late, then our goose is cooked—whether we’re in the Pit or not. But we have time. I’m sure of it. I heard the clocks chiming as they brought us in.”

  I shook my head. “It’s a mad plan.”

  “It’s our best plan.”

  “That too,” I conceded with a sigh. “All right, then. Where is this door?”

  † † †

  It turned out Nat knew exactly where the door was. Not only because his memory for maps was superb but because he’d come across it while he was untying Penebrygg.

  “Two paces forward and one to the left,” he directed me.

  He went first. A moment later, I heard a quiet scratching. “It’s not the easiest lock, but I think I can pick it.”

  “With what?”

  “Pins and things. I keep them in a jacket seam, and they missed them in the search. Probably because they were in such a hurry to tie me up. Check on Penebrygg, will you?”

  I had just found my way to him when I heard the lock click.

  “There it goes,” Nat whispered. “How is he?”

  “Still not moving,” I reported. “Maybe you should stay with him.” Though I did not relish the idea of going on alone, I felt honor-bound to make the suggestion.

  “And let you face the dangers alone?” Nat sounded almost angry at the notion. “Now, that really would be mad.”

  “But—”

  “No.” The anger left his voice, leaving only warmth. “We go together. And that’s that. Penebrygg would say the same if he could.”

  We go together. His words made me feel less alone in that black midnight of a cell. For the first time in hours, I smiled.

  And when you claim the grimoire? What will he say then?

  I pushed the thought away, but my smile went with it.

  † † †

  After we made Penebrygg as comfortable as we could, Nat tugged at the door. I almost lost my nerve as it swung wide. Would the ravens crowd in?

  The only thing that rushed toward us, however, was an ashy stench that made me gag.

  “Moonbriar fruit,” Nat told me. “Lots of it, to judge by the smell. They must still be feeding it to the ravens. Maybe they’re having more trouble getting viable eggs than we thought.”

  Cheered by this possibility, we felt our way forward into a narrow, stone-lined passage. Ten feet or so later, with the stench growing ever stronger, this ended at another door.

  “Locked.” Nat fiddled at the keyhole. “I can’t get it to open.”

  “What’s wrong?” I knelt by the door. At the keyhole, I was astonished to find the faint but smoldering smell of magic, almost veiled by the foul odors coming from the pit. I tried to call to mind what my godmother had taught me about such smells.

  “There’s magic at work here,” I said. “A charm to protect the ravens, I think.”

  “Scargrave’s doing,” Nat said.

  “But you said he can’t do magic.”

  “Not himself, no. But before he executes magic workers, he tries to pull their secrets out of them. And sometimes he persuades them to work a charm or two before they die.”

  I didn’t want to think about the nature of those deaths. Instead, I focused on the lock. “Lady Helaine taught me a song that should break it. Will anyone hear me?”

  “We’ll have to risk it,” Nat said.

  We were a long way from the Warders by now, but to be on the safe side, Nat closed the door behind us. In the choking air, I struggled to sing the right unlocking spell.

  When the lock clanked, I wrenched at the handle. It turned with a squawk, but the door didn’t budge. “Maybe it’s stuck.”

  As I tried the handle again, Nat heaved himself at the door.

  It gave way suddenly and completely, sending us sprawling over the threshold. Then it swung shut again with an ominous click.

  Flat on the stone floor, I was nearly overcome by the smell of the place: not merely ashes now but festering fumes like clotted smoke. Then I heard a sound in the darkness that made my heart go still: the whirr of ravens’ wings.

  “Lucy? Are you all right?”

  Something was wrong; I could feel it in the air, which was growing warmer by the moment.

  “Light,” I said shakily. “I need to see.” But when I tried to kindle a flame, my voice trembled too much to hold the tune.

  “Why isn’t it working?” Nat asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think the Shadowgrims might be waking—”

  “They can’t be. Believe me, we’d know it if they were.”

  Mewling clicks in the darkness nipped my mind like flames . . . and suddenly I knew the truth.

  “The new ravens,” I breathed. “They’ve hatched—and they’re trying to feed on me. I can feel them. Their voices—can’t you hear them?”

  Nat listened for a moment. “No.”

  “Then maybe I really am going mad—”

  “No,” he said swiftly. “Don’t say that.”

  The tiny voices strengthened. I could hear the words now. We are small. We must grow. We must feed by night and day . . .

  “Lucy?”

  I shuddered in the rising heat. “Oldville was right,” I gasped. “The rules are different for hatchlings. And . . . and I think there are more of them than we ever imagined.”

  Searing and greedy as fire, their ravenous voices assaulted me: We are hungry—oh, so hungry. And the magic in you feeds us . . .

  “Lucy, whatever they’re saying, remember: They can’t reach you.” Nat’s voice was sure and calm. “Neither the grown ones nor the hatchlings. Sir Barnaby says there’s a grille that walls them in, and that must be right. Otherwise, the birds would have flown out when we opened the door.”

  I understood that he was trying to drive the hot, painful whispers away. But they were too ferocious to be hemmed in by reason.

  “So you’re safe, you see,” Nat continued steadily. “They can’t get to you. And we’re going to walk right past them to the next room, to the grimoire. And then you’ll be able to put an end to them forever.”

  An end to the Shadowgrims: For a brief moment, I felt brave again, coolly confident. But then I remembered that my song was for claiming, not destroying. With the next breath, the heat and fear were back, worse than ever. I could not move. I could not breathe.

  “Lucy! Lucy, listen to me!”

  I could not hear the rest. Only the feverish whispers reached my ears, powerful as an incantation. They robbed me of movement and filled me with dread.

  Our parents fed on your mother. We will feed on you.

  Something tugged my hand, pulled against my neck. I wanted to scream, but I was too deep in the ravens’ hold to make a sound.

  Yes, we will feed on you . . .

  “Lucy. It’s me.”

  I could hardly hear the voice, it was so distant. But then Nat took my hand. A shock went through me as our fingers touched. My heart beat like a hammer, and I struggled again for breath.

  “I’ve found the door, but the lock’s like the other one,” he said. “It won’t give way. You’re going to have to sing it open.”

  I did not understand one word in ten. The fear was tearing me away again.

  You are ours.

  With steady fingers, he pressed a seedy, stringy pulp into my palm. Gripping my other hand, he used it to snag my necklace and lift it above my head.

  No! I buckled to my knees as the world became a boiling sea of sound. The voracious song of the hatchlings swirled around me, even louder and greedier than before.

 
; But then I heard something else: the moonbriar song rising from the pulp in my hand and from the floor around me. Cool and sweet and clear, the song wove itself like a shield around me, as Nat clasped my hand in his. When I gave voice to the music, the ravens lost their hold on me. Instead, I fell into Nat’s mind, tumbling into it without effort, just as I had done on that long-ago day in Penebrygg’s attic.

  But this time was different. This time Nat was inviting me in.

  Through his eyes, I saw the sea: great blue-green waves rolling onto a golden shore, their low and steady rumble like the breathing of the earth itself.

  I saw Norrie, ever loyal, standing before me, and behind her the friends I’d come to trust in London: Penebrygg and Nat himself.

  And then, even more miraculous, I saw myself as Nat saw me: arguing with him by candlelight; facing the Invisible College; mastering song after song. Behind every image, I felt an astonishing blend of emotions: desperation, frustration, admiration, respect, tenderness, desire. And weaving through them all, something more—a faith in me that went beyond anything I’d ever dreamed.

  Nothing could have startled me more, or comforted me so deeply. Courage and strength streamed into me.

  Still clasping Nat’s hand, I heard the magic of the Chamber door call out to me. In triumph I sang it open.

  A cool blue light poured in, illuminating the part of the Pit nearest us. Nat had been right: There was a grille between us and the ravens. But I had been right too: Behind the iron rods were hundreds of Shadowgrim hatchlings, their savage mouths red as blood.

  We slammed the door shut behind us, and the hatchlings vanished from sight.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE TRUTH

  As we pressed our backs to the door, catching our breath, I offered up a silent prayer of thankfulness. The heavy door, encased in iron, was so thick that I could not hear the Shadowgrim hatchlings through it.

  But my thankfulness splintered into desolation as I slung the ruby’s chain back over my head. My mind cleared, and the truth of what I’d done came home to me. I had sung the moonbriar song. I had read Nat’s mind. I had worked Wild Magic.

  How could I have been so careless?

  Suddenly weary beyond bearing, I forced myself to look down at the ruby. The faint light revealed what I had sensed from the moment I’d put it back on. A crack now crossed the stone’s glinting surface.

  Not a fatal flaw. Not this time. But there was a fragility to the whole stone, a trembling at its core, that frightened me.

  “I shouldn’t have read your mind,” I said to Nat.

  “No need to apologize,” he said, misunderstanding me. “Not when I’m the one who pulled you in. It was the only way I could think of to save you.”

  To my surprise, he blushed—a reminder to me that whatever the mind-reading had cost me, Nat had paid a price too. The most private of persons, he had let me see straight into his soul. All he felt for me had been laid bare.

  But that, at least, I could put right. I could tell him what he meant to me . . . .

  “Nat,” I began. My weariness was abating; my strength returning.

  Something to my left clicked and moved.

  Nat pointed in alarm. “The clock!”

  On the wall, a golden disk shimmered in the hazy blue light. Ringed with stars and planets and signs of the zodiac, its stark black hands marked the time.

  Nat knew what it meant. “Seven minutes till sunset!”

  “So close?” I gasped.

  “Yes. We’ll have to move fast. Where is the grimoire?”

  There was no more time to reflect on the immensity of what had passed between us, or on the price we both had paid for it. Instead, I scanned the long room. Though it had no windows, it did have another door, much larger than the one we had come through. It was evidently the main entrance to the room, and it was fitted with many locks. I had no doubt whatsoever that there were guards standing outside it.

  But what about the grimoire?

  As Nat ran to bar the door from the inside, I turned toward the other half of the room. With a strange mixture of excitement and revulsion, I recognized it as the place I’d seen through Scargrave’s eyes. There was the section of glowing blue wall. There was the ledge that tilted out almost like a table. And there, at its center, was the source of the light: a mottled ivory book, bound fast to the stone.

  “There it is,” Nat said softly. “The grimoire.”

  A tremor shook my body. I remembered the sick feeling of being in Scargrave’s mind, touching that book with Scargrave’s hands, of . . .

  No, this would not do. I must not go there again. I must concentrate on the present. I was seeing the grimoire with my own eyes now. And this time it was not Scargrave’s will but my own that counted.

  I strode toward the grimoire.

  “Six minutes,” Nat warned.

  I must sing. But as I lifted my hand to the grimoire, I stopped short. Once I claimed it, who would I be?

  Nat must have noticed my hesitation. He came up to me. “You haven’t forgotten the song, have you?”

  I shook my head but couldn’t speak.

  “Then what’s wrong?” he asked. “Is it what comes after? You won’t be alone then, you know. We’ll fight them together. We’ll fight them with everything we’ve got.”

  How had I ever thought those eyes hard to read? His loyalty, his passion, his faith in me—all were in plain sight as he stood beside me. He was hiding nothing now.

  I knew then that I owed him the truth.

  “It’s the wrong song,” I said, looking straight at him. “It won’t destroy the grimoire. It will only let me claim it.”

  “What?” His eyes changed, and I saw his shock and his anger. “You meant to betray us. All this time—”

  “No! I didn’t know, not till today. My godmother only told me after you left. That’s why we argued.”

  “So she knew all this time? She plotted against us?”

  Remembering her death, I tried to do justice to her. “She wanted me to be safe.”

  “And what else did she want you to do?”

  “It doesn’t matter what she wanted. What matters now is what I want. And that’s to defeat Scargrave. This song is all I have. If I don’t use it, Scargrave wins.”

  “But there must be something else you can do. Your Wild Magic—”

  “No!” I forced myself to explain calmly what had happened to my ruby when I’d read his mind. “I can’t afford to do any more Wild Magic, especially not with the grimoire. It was risky enough with the moonbriar, but with something as powerful and strange as the grimoire, it’s a hundred times more dangerous. It could shatter my stone—or make me sing music that sets every spell in the book loose, or that gives new powers to Scargrave. We can’t take that chance, not with so much at stake.”

  The clock whirred again. Four minutes.

  Nat’s eyes had a shuttered look, and I could no longer read them. “So you’ll claim the book. And then what?”

  “Trust me,” I told him. “I’ll do my best to put an end to the Shadowgrims. I’ll do what is right.”

  Nat shook his head. “You all say that.”

  I looked up at the clock. “Nat, there isn’t time—”

  “Open! Open in the name of the Protector and the King!” A tremendous shout went up on the other side of the great door. “Open, or we use the battering ram!”

  The door quaked in its frame as they pounded against it. With a gasp, I turned back toward the grimoire.

  “Another few blows, and we’ll have her!” It was Scargrave himself, urging his men on. “Your Majesty, you must go back! Only the Ravens’ Own should enter.”

  At the sound of his voice, my doubts vanished. I had to stop him.

  Nat took half a step toward me—to protect me? to stop me?—but I was already singing.

  The song poured through me and out of me, utterly foreign and yet somehow deep in my blood. And as I gave myself over to it, it began to reveal its me
aning to me for the first time:

  Before and after,

  Again and now . . .

  The great door cracked in two. With a howl, Scargrave’s men burst through, with the Lord Protector himself among them. But before they reached me, I uttered the last notes of my song:

  . . . I claim this book and its powers.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  AT THE HEART OF FEAR

  The book separated from its chains, its blue-white light flaring to a golden blaze. I felt only the most gentle warmth as it fell into my hands, but the air around me bent and curved, as if I were in the center of a great flame.

  In that same instant, I saw the faces around me redden and freeze, as if a blast of raven heat had transfixed them. Every last person in the room stopped still: the King, hand on his sword; the Ravens’ Own, rushing toward me; Scargrave, caught in midstride by the Raven Pit door. Even Nat stared at me and did not move.

  I glanced at Scargrave again. Behind him, the Raven Pit door was no longer shut. Had Scargrave had time to open it? Or was it my own song, claiming the grimoire and the Shadowgrims, that was responsible? Either way, the door swung free. Behind it, the hatchlings’ mewlings were now joined by a terrible croaking. The ravens were wakening. And then, with an ugly screech, the croaking twisted into a guttural whispering, vicious and foul: the language of the Shadowgrims.

  As the sound stole over the room, a new terror came with it. I could see it in the sweating and petrified people before me. To my astonishment, however, I did not share their fear. I did not feel the ravens’ fire.

  Of course you do not. The Shadowgrims belong to you now; so do the Ravens’ Own. They are yours to command; they cannot harm you. And the others are so transfixed with fear they cannot move or speak.

  I arched back in shock. The strange, sibilant words came from the grimoire itself. “You can speak?”

  Only to you, the grimoire said. I have waited such a long time for you, Chantress. But now we belong to each other.

  As the singsong voice slithered into my head, I shuddered. This was not what I had expected. But there was one advantage to having the grimoire speak: I could ask it questions.

  “Tell me,” I said. “How do I destroy the Shadowgrims?”