“Not a fan of the idea, I take it?” Branwyn drew closer to the throne, intrigued by the hint of faerie drama.
“The idea is a lovely one, and inevitable. Your modern cities are something new, with their steel and concrete jungles and all the plastics and the warrens above and below. But Nightwell's claim is... distasteful.”
“Why?” Branwyn stopped near the foot of the throne.
“Because I want the urban regions for my own people, silly girl.” He swung his foot down and gave Branwyn a look that was equal parts amusement and annoyance. “Faerie politics aren't your specialty, either.”
Branwyn huffed. “Fine. Let’s talk about my art instead, and what you’d like to pay for it.”
“Excellent.” Suddenly, he was standing before her, so close she could smell the scent of ocean and pomegranates that clung to him. He was very tall. “Let me escort you to your studio.” He offered her his arm, which she ignored as a matter of habit. So he took her hand instead, wrapping long, warm fingers around her palm and murmuring, “Sometimes my reasons aren’t what you think, Branwyn.”
With a tug, the room changed around them, like tiny blocks falling away as new blocks grew underneath. She squeezed his hand despite herself, suddenly nervous about what would happen if she let go.
As the room finished growing around her, she recognized it. It was the stone chamber she’d been locked in when she’d first met Tarn, only weeks ago. It had a brick forge and a tall workbench and a tool rack and a materials cabinet and almost everything she’d ever want to craft the strange yet functional items she sold as art. And the forge was still hot, and the stock she’d inspected before choosing an iron bar during her captivity was still scattered on the workbench.
Branwyn pulled away from Tarn. “Did you make this room or bring us to it?”
“Both. I pulled it out of Underlight the first time you visited me. It remains.” He picked up a bronze bar and turned it over, examining it idly.
“Why hasn’t the fuel in the forge burned out?”
He smiled at her. “Time is different here. This room was made for you, and it’s been waiting for you.”
She inspected the heavy door they hadn’t arrived through, the door that had once locked her in. He saw her look and said, “Your key will lock or unlock the door as you choose. It is your room.”
“Am I the only person here who even uses doors? Do you all whoosh around like we just did?”
He laughed. “No. This is my realm. Most of my people learn the paths, just as you eventually will.”
“Right.” Branwyn refocused. “So tell me if all this blunt talk offends you, but my takeaway from our earlier chat was that you could teach me magic in exchange for my services. Special magic, magic mostly unknown. How does that work?”
“I can teach you to manipulate the raw material of the Backworld, the very stuff Faerie is built from.” He reached out a hand to an empty slot on the cabinet and pulled a bar of silver stock out of nothingness. Then, holding the bar in one hand, he stroked it with his fingers. It curled around itself, as if reaching for his touch. Slowly, it took on the form of a flower, which then became a woman. The little statue stretched. Then Tarn blew on it and it vanished back into nothingness.
“Very nice,” said Branwyn dryly. “Are you sure you want me? I have to rely on chisels and molds and fire.”
He glanced at her, his gaze appraising. “Are you jealous? I said I would teach you to work as I can.”
“What good is it outside the Backworld? Can things I make from dreams and wishing in Faerie last on the other side of the curtain?”
“Not at first,” he said slowly. “Maybe never. That depends on you. But there are other benefits. You mentioned a personage earlier, spinning glamour onto children. That is one Earthside manifestation of what we do here. But it comes from our nature, tied as it is to the underside of Creation. In humans, understanding the foundations of the world gives different abilities. The bones of the Earth yearn to be touched by you. They are so often deaf to all but the song of fire, but when you have shaped their dreams, they learn to hear your voice.”
“Penny’s the one who reads poetry. She reads tabloids, too,” commented Branwyn. And then she hesitated. His answer had felt honest, more honest than it needed to be.
Tarn looked at her, steadily, patiently, and she sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I’m not interested. I am. But dreams and metaphysics don’t mesh well with iron and steel and titanium. I’m still not comfortable with… magic. And Corbin talks about it like it’s a science, sometimes.” She gave Tarn a hopeful glance.
Gravely, he said, “The way mortals work with the Geometry is a science. It is often predictable, usually quantifiable, reproducible. You can learn it from books and it rarely relies on feel. Did Corbin tell you the precise aptitude you lacked?”
“Other than a long lifespan? I didn’t press him on it. It wasn’t a fun conversation.”
“If you were to ask me, I would say patience. Crafting charms and effects through the Geometry requires research and experimentation and slow, methodical layering of lines.”
“Hey, you know what? Still not a fun conversation. Tell me how this is relevant?”
He smiled again, and Branwyn realized her attitude only amused him. She didn’t like it. When he reached out for her hand, she pulled away. He said, as if talking to a child, “I can’t describe how to touch and call forth the stuff of Faerie. But I can show you how it feels.” He turned his hand palm up and waited.
Branwyn took a deep breath. She was as skittish as a stray cat and she knew it. She didn’t like the thought of all this magic, didn’t like the idea of everything she knew being just a thin layer of gold leaf over the truth. She didn't like how it had hurt Penny. But she liked the idea of ignoring the truth less. She had to learn to accept it, and if she wanted to make a difference, wanted to not be left behind, wanted to find a way to save Penny, she had to learn to work with it. Tarn was not trustworthy, but he seemed to be making an effort to be patient with her.
She thought, randomly, about Severin, telling her she was interesting, but not interesting enough to bleed for. Then she put her hand in Tarn’s. She was here. She might as well see what he was talking about.
He took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers from behind, and reached out. His hand, and hers, slipped through an invisible curtain. She could still see it, but it didn’t seem part of her anymore.
“Close your eyes,” ordered Tarn. “Your eyes will try to make a science of it. Your eyes will lie to you. Listen to your hand instead.”
She did so. Layers of delicate fabric draped around her hand. It was as if when she arrived here, she’d stopped halfway through the veils and now Tarn was taking her all the way to the other side. Her fingertips tingled and her thumb grew hot. Tarn bent his fingers, and hers, and the unseen texture crumpled against her palm. It was cold, and sharp points pricked her skin.
“What is it?” he asked her.
“Iron ore?”
“Ah. A good start.” He pulled both their hands back into visibility, and Branwyn was clutching a rough lump of rock.
“Great,” said Branwyn. “How does this help me? I mean, there’s a shelf of ingots right there.”
He was amused again. “Baby steps, Branwyn. Once you can touch the foundations alone, we can progress.”
She tried, and felt stupid as she waved her hand around. “Show me again.”
He did so, over and over again. The iron-bearing stone on the worktable became the base of a tumbling pyramid. Once she pulled out copper, but mostly it was iron, and always, it was with Tarn’s hand guiding her.
Finally, she managed to catch the edge of an invisible veil. She felt her hand slide past the silken material, felt the tingle of her fingers and the heat on her thumb. But when she opened her eyes, her hand was right there. The sensations faded away.
“We will stop now,” announced Tarn. “You’re tired. You'll learn better after you’ve had
a chance to rest.” She scowled, and he added, “We still haven’t discussed how you are to pay for the education I’m providing.”
She noticed the change in terms: originally, the lessons were his way of paying her for the art she would make him. Now she would be paying him for an education? Well, it was the same thing in the end. “What do you want?”
“I’d like you to make me a mirror. With a decorative frame of iron.”
“And you want this made of real iron, I assume? Out in the real world? What kind of decoration?”
“Oh yes, definitely made in the world.” He smiled. “Although I should like to wait until you’ve developed your skills here.”
Branwyn looked at him for a long moment. He looked back, his handsome face alight with secret enjoyment. “I wish I knew what your angle was. What you’re really getting out of this exchange.”
“I collect art, Branwyn. And I suspect that the first piece worked by a new Artificer will have a certain… rarity value.” He tilted his head. “Would you like to see my collection?”
Branwyn’s breath caught. “Other works by other, uh, Artificers?”
“Some. Some by more mundane artists. They are still beautiful.”
Branwyn held out her hand. “Show me.”
He took her hand, tucked it into his arm, and led her through the door out of the studio.
“We’re walking?”
“Yes.” The hall was tall and elegant, with wooden beams arching across a high white ceiling. The dark wood widened to become panels on the pale walls, creating stripes that both impressed and disoriented.
Branwyn waited, but he didn’t elaborate. “Why?”
“I don’t just flit everywhere, Branwyn, especially when I have a guest to show off my realm to.”
“Will I get lost if I don’t hold onto you?”
He looked down at her. “Your directness is so refreshing. Why are you so averse to being treated like a lady?”
She lifted her hand from his arm. Nothing happened: both the hall and the faerie lord remained reassuringly solid. Sticking her hands in the pockets of her jeans, she strolled along beside him. “Because ladies are treated like children. Although really, Tarn, this is no way to build a relationship.”
“You don’t think so? I disagree.” The hall became an intersection ahead and he took the left fork. “Spending time together, talking, sharing interests.”
“Tricks, games, deception.”
“Those too, especially in a business relationship,” he said equably. “Games to help to pass the time. We have had so much time to pass, after all.”
They walked by an open door leading to a large room where figures moved around an extremely large table. Branwyn paused, looking in. A game of some sort was in progress, with dice and blocks and a complex map. The players of the game were as beautiful as Tarn, although some seemed far less human.
None of them had eyes like Severin.
As she stared, the players turned one by one to stare back at her.
She thought she knew why. She represented the world beyond to them. She represented freedom from an imprisonment it hurt her to even imagine. But the undisguised avarice in their looks made her uncomfortable, so she gave a little wave and moved on, trying not to dwell on what she could not yet change.
“My people,” said Tarn. “You don’t need to fear them. The courtkey marks you as a most precious guest.”
Precious. “That’s certainly what it seemed like.” She added, as an afterthought, “I wasn’t afraid.”
“Good.”
They continued until the hall ended at an ebony door, intricately carved to evoke running water within the grain of the wood. Tarn opened the door and bowed her through.
The room beyond was both museum and work of art. The floor was beautifully tiled in green, blue, and shades of white, producing an effect that was so much like ice and snow that Branwyn was surprised the ground didn’t crunch when she stepped inside. Paintings and plinths lined the walls between three archways leading to other rooms, with statues acting as pillars in long rows.
There was a gorgeous wooden seat in the middle of the room, set so that it could rotate on a circular base; like the floor, it was both work of art and functional item. Branwyn went to it first, running her fingers over the wood. Then she looked up at Tarn. “Which ones were made by Artificers?”
He studied her, his pied eyes glinting. “You tell me.”
Branwyn set her jaw and looked around. First, she inspected the works on plinths. There was a pair of small jade sculptures: an abstract dragon coiled in a loop around a kneeling woman. Then there was a tiara of green gold hammered into tiny leaves twined around emerald buds, two bronze statues, one of an antler-horned man and one of a winged woman, another jade sculpture, this one of a horse, and a set of toiletries wrought from gold. Somehow, it was easier for her to imagine magic being used in the creation of physical objects. She was a proficient painter, but the medium had never sparked her imagination once she’d started working in three dimensions
So she touched them all, keenly aware of Tarn watching her. She even picked the pieces up, inspecting them for makers’ marks.
And she couldn’t tell. They all seemed like real objects, shaped and smoothed with mundane tools. She glanced at the pillar-statues against the walls, then went to inspect the paintings. They covered a variety of subjects: battles and bedrooms and behemoths. Apparently Tarn wasn’t picky in terms of the subject matter of his collection. Then again, he’d probably had limited choices during the long centuries of his imprisonment.
Branwyn felt another pang of sympathy, which she squashed fiercely. He was too full of tricks to allow herself to be sympathetic in his actual presence; he'd demonstrated that amply. She reminded herself he’d engineered a partial escape for his people already.
Tarn's eyes were slitted closed, catlike. She told him, “They all look natural.”
“Hmmm?” Just as with a cat, she wasn’t sure if he was paying any attention to her.
Frowning, Branwyn went on another tour of the room. This time, she closed her eyes as she handled each exhibit. When she picked up the jade horse, it felt as if wisps of fiber clung to the edges of the sculpture, catching on the roughness of her fingers. “It’s like mold lines,” she said wonderingly, and then added, “Why didn’t he clean them up? Couldn’t he? If using magic means everything I make is covered with invisible spiderwebs, maybe I should cancel my lessons.”
“He didn’t have the chance before he lost access to the piece,” said Tarn. “His other pieces, made later, are cleaner.”
Branwyn opened her eyes, disappointed that she hadn’t found the way of identifying the Artificer-crafted pieces. “Is there a way to identify those? Without you telling me?”
“Oh yes. That you felt anything at all is a good sign, though. I have great hopes for you.” He moved past her and settled into the chair, which had clearly been made exactly for him. “Go, explore the gallery. Enjoy it for its own sake. You needn’t view every moment here as work.”
“Hah hah.” But Branwyn circled the room again, then passed through one of the archways into another room, identical in layout to the first, lacking only the chair and with a different pattern of red and yellow tiles on the floor. After taking in that room, she went to another, and another, and another. Each room was a bit smaller than the previous one, but there was still so much art that it would have taken a collector who wasn't locked away from the world decades to accumulate it all. She wondered if he’d acquired each work directly from the artist and what he’d paid them for them. There was nothing from painters she recognized, although there were a few that seemed to be students of the Old Masters.
She stopped in the middle of a room no larger than her bedroom. There were only two arches in this room, although there had been three in every other room. At least, she thought so. She could no longer quite recall. How long had she been exploring the gallery?
But before she could cast her mind
back to retrace her steps, her attention was caught by the arch across from her. It was the room beyond that had been calling her. She closed her eyes, and she could feel it from where she stood: the tendrils of unspun magic drifting in a cosmic wind like loose spiderwebs.
Eyes still closed, she moved through the arch into the room beyond. The tendrils whipped at her as the strange wind strengthened. The room around her was incomplete. A plan had been laid down, but not fulfilled. There was something caught in the threads in the unfinished mass, a form she couldn’t name that throbbed with heavy potential. Something strange and magical had been left unfinished.
Branwyn raised her hands to try and pull away the tendrils so she could better sense the plan, but they caught around her fingers and wrists. Then they were pulling on her—
Her eyes flew open. A multicolored mist surrounded her, simultaneously gaudy and terrifying. And unlike every other time she’d touched the underlying fabric of the Backworld, unlike all the other times she’d detected faerie magic, this time the sensation didn’t vanish when she opened her eyes.
Her hands were still caught, and something no more substantial than the mist was pulling on her. The tug was gentle at first, but slowly it became more insistent as she resisted the pressure. “No,” she said aloud. “I’m not coming in. Let go.” Belatedly, she added, “Please.” But it didn’t seem to matter. Whatever was behind the pull didn’t listen, or didn’t care.
Dread curled within her. She couldn't help but imagine a maw on the far end of the tug, something pulling her in to devour her. But she closed her eyes again, wiggling her fingers. Then she pushed them past the tendrils that caught on them, trying to reach further, past the surface level where the unfinished work rested and deep into the substrate. If she could pull out a bar of metal—or even an iron-laden rock—she’d have a weapon to defend herself against whatever monster waited within. She felt smooth metal against her palm—
Infinity Key (Senyaza Series Book 2) Page 6