“If he didn’t die, shouldn’t the curse have stayed here with him?” I said. “With him still alive, he should be bound to the Courts, not us.”
“Thomas was freed from his binding after seven years,” she said. “Yes, he also promised to come when his assistance was needed, but the curse released him after those seven years had passed, and his daughters were bound instead.”
“And you took him back.” My head spun. “But—you said the curse was left behind. Who did it bind them to?”
“Not who,” she said. “That was never the question, Hazel Lynn. Not who, but what…”
“The Courts.” Impossible. “You can’t bind someone to a place. Not without a person to carry the anchor.”
“Really?” Her voice was soft, her eyes glittering. “Have you never questioned why your house is formed of pure Summer magic, and why our power answers to your call and runs in your blood? You are tied to the heart of Faerie, and I intend to purge the rot from it while you still have breath in your lungs.”
Shock punched me in the chest. Faerie? Had the Erlking known? Perhaps he’d gambled on it, so Etaina would be left with Thomas and the Courts would gain the Gatekeepers for their own use.
I’d always thought my family were bound because of one man’s mistake. Not a conspiracy between rival Sidhe which had ended with a human family gaining power over the very realm itself.
“The curse can’t be broken, Hazel,” she added. “But it will come undone when Faerie is destroyed. Perhaps you will thank me for it, in the end.”
The impact of her revelations rippled through my mind like the sea after a storm, tearing through everything I thought I knew. No wonder the Gatekeeper’s magic was strong enough to resist the power of the Erlking’s talisman. The whole of Faerie was bound up in it.
And if the Courts fell, we’d be free. The ultimate price for our freedom would be the end of Faerie itself.
“I’ll take him—” She held up Hummingbird by his wing. “Thomas, kindly see to it that she does not escape this time. It will be exceedingly painful for you if she does.”
And in a flash of light, she was gone, leaving me alone with my traitorous bastard of an ancestor, who stood at a distance from me as though he expected me to kick him again. Which I might, if it would do any bloody good whatsoever.
“How can no time pass in this realm at all?” I said instead. “It must do, if she expects to come back.”
“It’s part of the glamour of this place,” he said. “Time passes only when Etaina wills it to. We will remain frozen in time until she returns.”
“Damn.” I paced to the door, then halted. We’re frozen in time. You can get answers without missing the battle. “You were there when I was chosen as Gatekeeper. I heard your voice.”
He laid the harp down. “Etaina’s last piece of revenge on the Courts… I was ordered to pick the sibling who was least likely to be a threat, or most likely to make trouble. Your sister, studious and loyal, would have been easier for the Sidhe to control. Your brother was already showing signs of another talent which would’ve been troublesome to the Sidhe if he’d become Gatekeeper. That left you.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said. “You picked me because I was the last resort?”
Granted, Morgan’s psychic talents would have terrified the Sidhe, while Ilsa’s non-confrontational tendencies would have made her less likely to piss them off. So Thomas had picked me as a middle finger to the Courts. Even my own ancestor had used me for his own ends.
“Yes, and you still enabled Etaina to get her hands on the talisman again,” he said. “Now she will use it as she always intended to.”
“Blame the Seelie Queen for shooting the Erlking if you must,” I snapped. “The instant he died, Etaina started plotting to get it back. And I bet you knew it, yet you were too much of a coward to reveal yourself to me. You know, I’m not sorry I kicked you in the face at all. In fact, I might just do it again.”
The anger melted from his expression. “It isn’t like she said,” he said, his voice quiet. “When she took me, it was for more than her own amusement. She called upon a god, one of the Ancients, for favours, and every seven years, she offered the soul of a mortal man as a tribute. I would have been that sacrifice if I hadn’t bound myself.”
“And bound the rest of us,” I said heatedly. “Was it worth screwing over your descendants to save your own neck? Generations of us have had to bow before the Courts, obeying their every whim while knowing they might dispose of us in the blink of an eye. I hope your long life was worth it, Thomas Lynn, because if I can deliver you to hell myself, I’d gladly do it.”
He said nothing to argue with me. Everything I’d said was true, after all. He knew nothing of the suffering his decision had caused my family, let alone the effects on Faerie itself.
“If I were capable of leaving this place and moving to the world beyond, I would take your hand and let you lead me there in a second,” he finally said. “But that fate is not for me.”
“You know, the stories paint you as kind of noble,” I said. “Or at least less of an arsehole.”
“What is the story they tell of me?” he said.
I thought back. “There’s a lot of versions of the same tale. Even the regular humans know some of them. They say you were saved from Faerie by your mortal lover…”
“Correct,” he said. “On Samhain seven years after I bound myself, I was forced to ride alongside the Sidhe in the mortal realm. My true love rescued me that night, pulling me from the horse I rode. In doing so, she prevented me from becoming the sacrifice, but I was unaware that Faerie still owned my soul. And I was unaware that the binding existed in my bloodline. When my daughters were grown and taken into Faerie, the Lady of Light brought me here. And so I remain.”
“Your daughters were taken to Summer and Winter,” I said. “As were their descendants. I’ve been at the mercy of the Seelie Court’s nobles since before I could walk.”
Pain flickered in his eyes. “I didn’t know. I thought my own soul would be enough, and that my death would bring the end of the curse. But I cannot die. The impact of the binding is such that I am an immortal, like them, and I can no more lie than the Sidhe can. I suppose I will know when she wins, because the curse will disappear when the Courts fall.”
And so would I. The curse would dissolve along with the Courts, allowing me to walk away free with my family while leaving the Sidhe to reap what they’d sown.
I’d spent my life resenting Faerie for what the Sidhe had done to me, yet a not-insignificant part of me had always believed I had to serve the Court because nobody else would. Knowing so many people had had a hand in my fate had shaken away any last shreds of loyalty to Summer I’d possessed, but the warring queens wouldn’t stop with the Courts. Earth would be next, and the humans would suffer a far worse fate than any Lynn had.
“What will she make you do to me if I try to escape?” I asked. “How far under her influence are you?”
“Too far,” he said. “There is no safe way for you to leave this place. When this realm was disconnected from Summer, all doors were closed.”
“The only way out is to borrow someone’s sprite or use a spell?” No wonder I’d never seen any doors here, nor been able to find the entrance in the real world.
“I know only what I have been told,” he said. “I have walked these corridors for countless years and never found a way out.”
A chill raced through my blood. “Then I guess I’ll have to rope one of her soldiers into helping me. I take it you don’t have any of her skills with glamour?”
“No,” he murmured.
“Well, either she’ll show up in a second or not at all,” I muttered. “Unless she changes her mind and decides she needs me to wield the talisman for her.”
His eyes widened. “You are still the wielder? Yet she carries it?”
“She’s immune to its magic, even if she can’t use it.” My mouth tightened. “We’re at a stalemate. She and the Se
elie Queen are, too, but I doubt they care much for collateral damage. Humans and faeries alike will die in their war. I’d rather keep the curse and have my family walk away alive than gain my freedom and lose everything else. As for the talisman, I bet there’s a reason it picked me, and it has to do with the centuries of curses and treachery you’ve brought on my whole family.”
Thomas remained silent for a moment. “If you are still the wielder, there may yet be hope. You retain a link to the gods, through its magic.”
“Not much use here.” I called the shadows, experimentally, but no chill of familiar magic came to my hands. “I’m too far away from her to use its power.”
“It matters not,” he insisted. “You still have other advantages, do you not?”
“What, the ability to cross between realms?” I frowned. “I take it I can’t just use that power to step into Faerie from here?”
“No, but you can speak to the gods,” he said. “As long as you’re bound to that talisman, you’re free to use their language without consequence, as the Sidhe are.”
“Speak to the gods?” I said. “They’re dead. The Devourer is gone, and even if he wasn’t, Etaina is impervious to the talisman’s power. She and the Seelie Queen both.”
“Not forever,” he said. “The Sidhe’s one weakness is the power of their predecessors, however much they tried to fight it by exiling their gods and stealing their magic. Etaina may have marked her army, but those bindings will last a day at most. She means to win today.”
“Those marks.” My heart jolted. “Those are Invocations, too. They aren’t permanent?”
“They aren’t.” His mouth tightened. “The Sidhe did terrible things when they spilt the lifeblood of the gods and used its remains to fuel their immortality, Etaina most of all. After I thwarted her sacrifice, she stopped contacting the gods altogether. She feared they would turn on her.”
“That's why she wanted the talisman.” I understood that much, but it wouldn't help me get out. “I'm guessing she and her sister got into an argument over it, too.”
“Because the Erlking used the gods’ magic to cut this realm off from Faerie,” he said. “There is a chance, however, that the same magic can set you free.”
“You mean I can use an Invocation to break out?” I said. “I told you, I can’t read the language if it isn’t in front of me.”
The runes on my talisman—and inside Ilsa’s book—had been understandable to me, but none came to mind off the top of my head which would allow me to break out of this place.
Off the top of my… A shiver ran through the symbol on my forehead. An Invocation that meant ‘Gatekeeper’.
The power of the Gatekeepers had won out when faced with the staff. If my family’s curse was fuelled by Faerie itself, it was no wonder even the Seelie Queen feared the backlash. Etaina had known all along what we were capable of, but she hadn’t wanted to make an open challenge against the Gatekeepers… until now.
Because we were stronger than her.
“What does it mean?” I said. “Gatekeeper? Last time I spoke the word aloud, it took me to the Erlking, but he’s dead.”
Perhaps because he'd once been at the heart of Faerie. But nothing remained there any longer except rot and decay.
“I will take you to the border where our realm was once linked to the rest of Faerie,” said Thomas. “Perhaps you can find a way to open it.”
He strode out of the room with surprising speed, and I had to half-run to keep up. Winding corridors led us along a route I didn’t know, until he came to a halt in an empty chamber. On the wall, symbols had been etched into the packed earth, their edges shimmering with light.
“Who…?” The Erlking. I recognised his hand in the scrawled symbols, and their meanings filtered through my mind. A binding spell, sealing this tunnel and cutting off the Aes Sidhe from Faerie at large. “This is where the Courts used to be connected? And you think I can get us out where nobody else has succeeded?”
“You have done many impossible things already, Hazel Lynn.”
He wasn’t wrong, but I suspected nobody had succeeded because Etaina had ensured she was the only person here in the Court who could read the symbols at all. Perhaps there was another reason she’d denied her soldiers a chance to learn how to read. Because if they learned the language of the Ancients, they might use them against her.
Thomas reached for the wall, rubbing his palm against the surface. Below, more text became visible. “The Erlking himself wrote these words.”
I read the words carefully. One gate became two
One key became two
One lies below the earth
One lies above the surface
Two must belong to one
To make two become one.
“He carved a riddle into the wall?” I read the words over again, but unlike the ancient symbols, the plain words were written in the usual faerie language with no embellishment. “Why would the Erlking leave a way out? Did he know the Gatekeeper might end up trapped here one day?”
He’d known Etaina, so perhaps he’d seen her power grab coming. In the event of his death, he would have expected her to go after both the talisman and the Gatekeepers. The guy was devious, that was for damned sure.
“We have to find two keys,” I said. “No idea what gates it’s talking about, though. This is a wall, not a gate, and faerie riddles tend to be literal.”
“Two keys,” Thomas repeated. “One lies below the earth, one above the surface. That means one of them is here in the realm of the Aes Sidhe.”
“Did Etaina know about any of this?” I said. “Because she had a lot of keys in her office. I saw them when I was looking for the talisman.”
“It makes sense that Etaina would keep one of these keys for her own,” said Thomas.
“Guess it’s time to stir up some more trouble.” I backed up from the wall. “You don’t seem worried that the guards will come after us.”
“Most of them will be with Etaina, fighting for her Court. She trains every one of her people as warriors, if she can.”
Figures. I let Thomas take the lead, taking the two of us to Etaina’s office. Two guards stood outside the doors, wearing the same uniform as the rest.
“You.” A guard with foxy features looked me over. “You should not be here.”
“The Lady of Light told me to watch her,” said Thomas, his face bland. “You are needed elsewhere.”
As the guard opened his mouth to speak, Thomas struck him over the head. The second guard lunged at me, and I hit him hard in the jaw, knocking him backwards into the wall. Thomas pulled a key from the guard’s pocket and inserted it into the door, while I blinked at him. “You just… no, that wasn’t a lie, was it?”
“I am accomplished at evading untruths by now,” he said, in calm tones. Like he hadn’t just knocked a guy out. Thomas had learned the Sidhe’s games well. If he’d been here for centuries, it was no wonder.
We entered the office and I made for the desk drawer where I’d found Etaina’s keys. “How am I supposed to know which is the right one? Does she have somewhere she keeps hidden?”
Thomas crouched and pressed a hand to the floor, unearthing a hidden trapdoor the same colour as the earth. “It has been a while since I last saw this place, but I believe she keeps some of her valuable possessions underneath the floor.”
I crouched at his side and recoiled. A pool of stagnant water lay inside a shallow hole in the floor, its surface dull and grey. Despite that, an odd sheen glittered atop its rippling currents. Around it lay tools—pens, carved knives, all glittering with the same colour. Even the stones did, but the water itself looked faded, sickly, as though she’d leached the very life from it.
Thomas was silent for an instant. “I’ve seen her using those pens to mark her soldiers.”
“With Invocations.” I clapped a hand to my mouth. “This is the blood of the gods?”
Not only was the blood capable of bestowing immortality, it carried t
he gods’ own power. When Etaina marked her Sidhe with the right symbols, they became immune to the talisman’s destructive magic. But she’d overdone it, and now the pool of enchanted blood was reduced to almost nothing.
“Did she mark all her guards recently?” I asked Thomas. “She did, didn’t she? She put markings on everyone in her Court to ensure the talisman wouldn’t harm them, and she used up most of her supply of blood in the process.”
If I destroyed her blood supply, it wouldn’t put an end to her, but maybe she’d think twice about wielding the talisman if the marks wore off. And they would do. No magic lasted forever.
Faint shadows stirred in my fingertips, and the instant I touched the surface, the blood gave way to dark mist, revealing a key lying on the bottom.
There it is.
“One key down.” My hand closed around the cool metal shape. “The second one lies above the earth. Does that mean it’s in the Courts?”
“I’m afraid I do not know, but I suspect you’re right,” Thomas said. “What are you going to do with those?”
I picked up the pen he’d indicated, then tossed it aside. “It’s out of ink.”
Not all of them were, though, and an idea sparked in my head. The Erlking must have used one of them to write the words of the binding onto the cave wall and disconnect the two realms. Perhaps I might use the same method to make the two realms become one once again.
Two become one. Might that be what it means? Maybe, maybe not, but getting the pens away from Etaina could only be a good thing.
After grabbing the few pens with ink left in them and stuffing them into my pockets, I left Etaina’s office behind. Thomas and I retraced our steps through the winding tunnels to the chamber with the writing carved into the wall. The lack of any challengers unnerved me, if just because I knew Etaina’s army would be fighting on the battlefield right this instant.
I walked up to the writing on the wall. The image of the symbol on my forehead appeared in my mind’s eye. I’d seen it in the mirror enough times to be able to recall every detail. Fixing my attention on that image, I let my mind skim the surface in search of meaning.
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