Silver Borne mt-5

by Patricia Briggs

  “Excuse me,” said Ariana, walking up to a man who was stirring something in a pot that looked like oatmeal.

  “Stir the pot seventy times seven,” he said.

  “Where are they keeping the prisoners?” Samuel asked, putting the push into his voice that the really dominant wolves could. His voice echoed oddly in the room.

  Slowly, all the action in the kitchen came to a stop. One by one, the six people wearing silver circlets around their throats turned to look at Samuel. The man Ariana had spoken to stopped moving last. He pulled his spoon out of the pot and pointed to one of the seven rounded doorways. The others, one by one, pointed the same way.

  “Forty-seven steps,” the oatmeal stirrer said.

  “Take the right tunnel,” said a man who’d been chopping turnips.

  “Eighteen steps and turn,” said a girl kneading bread. “The key is on the hook. The door is yellow.”

  “Do not let them out,” said a boy who looked about thirteen and had been filling glasses with water from a pitcher.

  “Resume your tasks,” said Samuel, and one at a time they did so.

  “I think that’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Jesse. “Are we just going to leave these people here?”

  “We’re going to get Gabriel out and Phin,” said Ariana. “And then we’ll take this to the Gray Lords, who have forbidden the keeping of thralls. Only the fairy queen can release her thralls, and the Gray Lords are the only ones who have a chance of making her do that. In the Elphame, she rules utterly.”

  “What if she’s enthralled Gabriel?”

  “She won’t have,” said Ariana positively. “She promised Mercy, and breaking her promise would have dire consequences. And my Phin is protected against such a thing.”

  The path we took from the kitchen was less grand than the one we’d taken into it. The floor was made of those small white octagonal tiles with a line of black tiles running about a foot from either wall. Forty-seven paces from the kitchen, the tunnel widened into a small room. The black tiles formed a complicated Celtic knot in the center of the room. There were passageways that opened across from ours, and one to either side.

  We took the one to the right. Here the floor was rough wooden planks that showed the marks of being hand hewn. It creaked a little under Samuel, who was the heaviest of us.

  “Eighteen,” he said, and there was a yellow door with an old-fashioned key hanging off a hook—the first door we’d seen in the Elphame.

  Samuel took the key from the lock and opened the door.

  “Doc?” said Gabriel. “What are you doing here?”

  “Gabriel.” Jesse pushed past Samuel.

  Key in hand, Samuel followed her in. Ariana and I brought up the rear.

  Gabriel was hugging Jesse. “What are all of you doing here? Did she get you, too?”

  The room was white. White stone walls, white ceiling with clear crystals hanging down to light the room. The floors were made of a single slab of polished white marble. There were two beds with white bedding.

  The only color in the room came from Gabriel and the man who was lying on one of the beds. He looked dreadful, and I’d never have recognized him if Ariana hadn’t whispered his name.

  Phin sat up slowly, as if his ribs hurt, and Ariana rushed to kneel beside his bed on one knee.

  He frowned at her. “Who?”

  “Grandma Alicia,” she said.

  He looked startled, then he smiled. “Has anyone ever told you that you don’t look like anyone’s grandmother? Is it a rescue, then? Like in the old stories?”

  “No,” said Samuel, who had turned to face the doorway. “It’s a trap.”

  “Welcome to my home,” said a familiar dark voice. “I’m so happy you came to call.”

  The woman who stood in the doorway of the cell was lovely. Her hair was dark smoke, pulled back in a complicated braid composed of many small plaits. It flowed down her back and dragged the ground like an Arabian show horse’s tail and set off the porcelain of her skin and the rose of her lips.

  She was looking at me. “I am so glad to have you in my home, Mercedes Thompson. I was just trying to call you on my cell when—imagine my surprise—I discovered that you were here. But you did not bring it.” Having a fairy queen talking about cell phones almost was enough to make me laugh. Almost.

  I raised my chin. By stealth, by strength, by bargain. “I am not such a poor bargainer, fairy queen. If I had brought it, we could not play.”

  She smiled, and her silver-gray eyes warmed. “By all means,” she said. “Let us play.”

  Chapter 14

  “BUT THIS IS NOT THE PROPER PLACE FOR BARGAINING,” she said. “Follow me.”

  Ariana picked up Phin in her arms. Samuel looked at Gabriel.

  “I’m okay, Doc,” he said. He glanced at Ariana, then looked at me. “Werewolf?” he mouthed.

  “No,” said Samuel. “That’s me. Ariana is fae.”

  Gabriel jerked his head to Samuel. “You’re . . .” And then his face cleared. “That explains a few things . . . Snowball?”

  Samuel smiled. “Are you sure you don’t need help?”

  “Phin’s the one who was really hurt,” he said. “He’s gotten a lot better over the past week, but he didn’t start off good.”

  I gave Gabriel a sharp look, but I supposed it wasn’t really important to tell him that he’d only been gone a day, out in the real world—if we didn’t get out before Zee had to stop holding the door open, then it really wouldn’t matter.

  The fairy queen’s voice floated through the doorway. “Are you coming?”

  Ariana nodded to Samuel, who took point again out the door, following the fairy queen. Ariana went next, and I waved my hand for Gabriel and Jesse to precede me. I took a deep breath, the kind that cleared your mind and lungs before some extreme endeavor—and smelled earth and growing things in this cold marble room.

  Only the fairy queen’s glamour would work in her Elphame, Zee had said. I paid attention to my nose as we walked down the hall in the wake of the fairy queen.

  Question, I thought, as I tried to sniff out the scents that were real from the ones produced by the queen’s illusions. If it looks like a hallway, feels like a hallway, and acts like a hallway—is it important to figure out that it isn’t a hallway?

  But curiosity is very nearly my besetting sin. Gradually, as we walked, the scent of dirt, of the sap of wounded wood, and of something that might have been sorrow grew. I glanced up at the dangling lights and saw tree roots instead of silver wires, and shining rocks instead of gemstones, rocks much like the one Zee had given Ariana. I blinked, and the gems were back, but I didn’t believe in them anymore, and they wavered.

  I stumbled and looked down, momentarily seeing a root sticking up from a soft dirt floor, then my vision changed and the tiny white tiles, laid flat and even with nothing to trip over, were back.

  “Mercy?” Jesse asked. “Are you all right?”

  The queen looked back at me, and her face—though still beautiful—was different from the woman she’d been just a few minutes ago. It was elongated from chin to forehead, and her eyelashes were longer than humanly possible without glue and fake eyelashes. Narrow, clear wings, like a damselfly’s, poked up from her shoulders. They were too small to lift her body off the ground without magic.

  “Fine,” I said.

  The long silver gown the queen had been wearing was real enough, but there were dark brown stains that might have been old blood on the hem and near her wrists. The necklace she wore, which had looked like a silver-and-diamond waterfall, was of tarnished black metal, and the set stones were uncut.

  My first sight of the great hall she led us to was jaw-dropping, if only for ostentatiousness. The floors were white marble shot with gray and silver, and pillars of green jade rose gracefully to support an arching ceiling that would not have looked out of place at the Notre Dame Cathedral. Silver trees with jade leaves grew out of the marble floor and shivered, distu
rbed by a wind I could not feel. When the leaves knocked together, they chimed musically. Graceful benches carved out of pale and dark woods, like a wooden chess set, were placed artfully around the room, occupied by lovely women and beautiful men, who all looked at us when we entered the room.

  At the far side of the hall there was a raised dais with a silver throne, delicately made and decorated with gems of green and red, each as big as my hand. Curled up next to the chair was a cat that looked like a small cheetah until it lifted its head, displaying huge ears. Serval, I thought, or something that looked a lot like the medium-sized African hunting cat. But I didn’t smell a cat: the whole room smelled of rotting wood and dying things.

  And then the room I was walking through wasn’t a room at all.

  I didn’t think there were any naturally occurring caves in this area. There are a few man-made caves because some of the wineries have carved their own caverns into the basalt to age their wines. Most of our geology is igneous, which allows for lava tubes, but no limestone caves like the ones in Carlsbad. I suppose magic, if it is strong enough, doesn’t care much about geology—because we were in a huge cave whose walls, ceiling, and floor were not stone but earth and roots.

  The Elphame was magic made, but I wondered if it was the fairy queen’s magic that had created it. Ariana had looked at the tree roots in the cave Zee’s entrance had brought us to, and she said that there must be a forest lord about. Looking around, I thought she was right.

  The floor was woven from tree roots—I had to look sharp not to trip and draw attention to myself again. The fairy queen’s throne was the only thing in the whole room that had not altered when I saw through the glamour. The pillars were thick roots hanging from the ceiling or bursting from the floor like living stalactites and stalagmites. The benches were formed of living wood, not so pretty as the queen’s illusions, but more beautiful.

  Most of the fae in the room were not pretty—though there were a few as long as your tastes weren’t hung up on humanity as a standard for beauty. None of them looked like lords and ladies—Ariana and the fairy queen herself were the most human-appearing among them, and neither would have been able to walk into a store without everyone knowing that she was other.

  I didn’t waste much time looking at the court fae, though. It was the creature that lay behind the fairy queen’s throne that caught my attention. It lay huge and still, like a great redwood cut down by the woodsman’s axe. It had bark and evergreen needles—but it also had four eyes as big as dinner plates that glowed like ruby glass lanterns. It was bound with iron chains that glittered with magic. I didn’t know what a forest lord looked like, but a giant tree with eyes seemed like a strong possibility.

  Next to the throne was a middle-aged woman who had the strong features and coloring of the Mediterranean people—Greek or Italian or possibly even Turkish. She wore the collar I’d begun to associate with the fairy queen’s thralls, but she was also chained to the throne. My nose told me that somewhere among the fae, the humans, and the dying forest lord, there was a witch. I could see a witch being tough enough that the fairy queen would want more than just a silver ring around her throat to ensure she was controlled.

  Among those who call themselves witches, there are various types. Least troublesome are the humans who have adopted Wicca as their religion. Some of them have a spark of power, enough to enrich their faith, but not so much to attract the attention of bigger and nastier things.

  Then there are the white witches—people born to the witch families who have chosen to do no harm. Like the mundane-born witches, white witches are usually not very powerful—because witch magic gets its power from death, pain, and sacrifice, and white witches have chosen to eschew that.

  Most witches of any power are black witches. They smell of it, some more than others. There are black witches who skirt the doing of actual evil. Elizaveta Arkadyevna, our pack’s witch, is one of those. She is very powerful as witches—even as black witches—go. But, as I understand it, skirting evil is difficult, time-consuming, and requires a lot more from a practitioner than true black magic does. It is so much easier to use the suffering of others to make magic, and the results are more predictable.

  This witch—and as we closed toward the throne, the smell got stronger and stronger, making my supposition more and more likely—this witch stank of the blackest magic. In her neighborhood, pets and small children would go missing, and even the occasional homeless man. I was betting that the iron chains binding the forest lord were hers.

  The room the others saw, for all its height, was not a terribly big one. The cave I could see was bigger, but almost half of it was taken up by the forest lord behind the throne. It didn’t take long for us to reach the dais.

  The fairy queen sat on the edge of the seat of the silver throne and reached down to pet her witch—who didn’t seem to appreciate it much. The queen’s wings fluttered as she sat, then folded so she could lean against the back of the throne.

  Her eyelids fluttered with a faint wrip-wrip sound. Once I was facing her, I could tell that her eyes were just . . . wrong. She would stare and stare, then blink rapidly. It was hard to watch.

  “Jesse,” she said. “Tell me your name?”

  “Jessica Tamarind Hauptman,” Jesse said, her voice not quite right.

  “Jessica,” said the queen. “Isn’t that a pretty name? Come sit at my feet, Jessica.” She looked at me and smiled as Jesse did as she was bid.

  The queen leaned forward to pet her head—Jesse seemed to appreciate it more than the witch had. “She is half-mine already,” the queen told me. “Your young man, Gabriel, and I have already done this as well. Haven’t we?”

  “Yes, my queen,” he murmured tightly.

  “I haven’t collared him because of our bargain, Mercedes Thompson, but while a human is in my presence, unless I suppress my magic, they belong to me. It was not smart of you to bring me another thrall.” She patted Jesse one last time, then sat back. “But that is not all you brought into my Elphame. Tell me, Mercedes, how is it that you managed to bring not only a fae, but a wolf with you when you were not to speak of this to them?”

  I gave her the short version. “I taped our phone conversation.”

  “I see.” She looked like she’d swallowed a lemon, but didn’t complain. “So, Mercedes Thompson, you would cry bargain.” She smiled coolly. “You want to exchange the Silver Borne for your life?”

  Ariana gave me a sharp look, but I knew how to listen—and I knew about fairy bargains that left you ruing the day you made them, even before I’d read Phin’s book. If I wasn’t really careful, I could bargain the book for my life—and end up wishing myself dead. For instance, I could get out of here and be forced to leave Jesse and Gabriel behind.

  “I don’t know,” I said, squirming under the weight of the fairy queen’s gaze. I bit the inside of my lip until it bled—and it hurt because human-shaped teeth aren’t sharp enough to cut through skin easily.

  “Samuel,” I said, “a kiss for courage and clear-seeing, my love?”

  Samuel turned to me, startled—a kiss was probably the last thing that he’d been thinking of. I stood on my tiptoes and damn near had to climb him to get to his mouth. I clamped my open lips to his and tried to get as much blood into his mouth as I could. After the barest instant he seemed to understand what I was doing. He participated fully, licked my lip, and set me down gently.

  I hoped the blood would work as it had in the bookstore, and that he saw what I did. It was hard to say from Samuel’s reaction, but I thought it had. Maybe it wouldn’t matter, but, outside of the gun in my shoulder holster and the one in the small of Jesse’s back, Samuel was our best weapon against the fae. Maybe he was better than the guns because he’d be a lot harder to stop. It couldn’t hurt to have him know what he was fighting.

  “Very affecting,” the queen said, sounding bored. “Are you courageous and clear-sighted enough to give me the Silver Borne yet?”

  “That is
not a bargain,” I said, trying to keep her from seeing the blood on my mouth. “It is an exchange. I would consider such an exchange only if my comrades are allowed to leave. It is having them leave here safely and soon that I’m interested in bargaining for.”

  “A true bargain?” she said. “Do you play an instrument?”

  The piano and I have a hate-hate relationship. I didn’t consider that playing, and I know my piano teacher hadn’t either. “No.”

  “A different bargain, then. You hold something of my choosing while it changes. For each time it changes, I release one person.”

  She snapped her finger, and the witch muttered to herself, and the fae nearest us—a short and fine-boned creature with skin like a peach and pinkish green hair—burst into flame. It wasn’t glamour because the room didn’t change. They were real flames even though they didn’t seem to hurt the fae.

  “She can’t hold flame, without dying,” said Ariana. She hadn’t looked at Samuel or me since I kissed him. I don’t know if she suspected something was up—or if she thought we were lovers. “And that breaks the heart of the bargain. It must be something that is possible—however unlikely—for the challenger to accomplish.”

  “Fine,” said the queen. “If you are so particular, Silver, you may be the challenger.” She laughed, and the roots in the ceiling writhed as the sound of bells echoed in the room. “Of course I knew who you were, dear Silver—how could you think otherwise? Are there so many of us who chose to live so disfigured by the fangs of hounds and wolves? No. Only Silver. So you may take this bargain, and the alternative is that I will kill this almost-mortal woman who is not so human as your Phin or the boy. Half-blood is not human enough to be saved by the guesting laws of the Elphame.”