by K. Ferrin
Ling thought of all the ways the warlocks could find them, see them coming, or even kill them before they got to where they were going. She knew what sorts of powers they had, but had no idea just how far they could reach. She’d seen Witch grow a wall of green right up out of the soggy earth around her cabin—what could a full-fledged Toventuin do? She had no answer to that question or the multitudes of others that plagued her. Toventuin, Tovendieren, Tovensteen, and Tovenveran. Black, gold, green, and purple. They were all just different facets of terror for her now. It seemed the curiosity and fascination Evelyn had always felt for magic had disappeared as she vomited the foul poison Fariss had dumped into her.
Ling wrote in the grimoire while Fern searched for a way back into Shadowhold. She listened to the scratch of pen on paper, wondering if she would ever write in these pages again. She avoided thinking about the possibility that she would never read these pages again. The idea of waking up every day to a dungeon, to torture, and not knowing why or even how she’d gotten there was a form of terror she didn’t know how to think about. To her, it seemed far worse than just knowing you were a prisoner.
After a few minutes, she changed her mind. Being able to remember that long, dark tunnel of torture that stretched eternally behind you, and knowing you had an equally long one in front of you, was infinitely worse.
She recorded their entire plan, at least what she knew of it so far. She didn’t know when she’d next be able to write in the book, and she wanted to document as much as she could.
When she finished, she flipped back through the book until she found the day Witch had given her the grimoire. Witch had been working on a potion designed to help people forget. Evelyn had thought such a thing nonsense. Every day of her life had been filled with such wonder, she wanted to remember every minute of every one of them.
Now Ling understood the desire to forget. Evelyn’s memory was like a stroll through a sunlit garden, but Ling’s was more like sailing the river on a storm day. Most mornings she wanted nothing more than to throw her book of memories into the deepest, darkest pit she could find. She never wanted to read them again; she didn’t want to remember. But because she had no memory of her own, she understood just how precious a thing it really was. Something that perhaps many normal people didn’t understand at all. She hated the grimoire. But it was also the most precious thing in all the world. Her memory was what and who she was. Without it, she was nothing.
It was late afternoon when Fern finally opened her eyes and hopped into the raft. Ling climbed in after her. The boat was so small, it barely fit the two of them, and their knees overlapped one another in the middle. Ling took up the paddles and rowed as quietly as she could, though she wondered why she bothered. The variety of creatures that called this swamp home were in full-throated song.
The boat crawled deeper into the swamp. They didn’t speak now, both intent on searching the thick trees and hanging vines around them for any indication of a trap. Their tiny boat weaved through a tight maze of massive tree trunks and towering knobs of tree root, floating along on water that was sometimes barely more than a few inches deep.
They traveled for hours in this fashion, seeing nothing but trees and moss and water. As day began falling into evening, a thick fog rolled in. Ling had always loved fog, but here, now, it had a sinister tone to it. She wondered if the Tovenveran could control the weather. Bumps stood up on her arms, and the skin on her neck crawled. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. Maybe even followed. She couldn’t tell if the feeling was real, if her instincts were warning her of something, or if she was just being paranoid.
A heavy splash broke through the evening birdsong. It had come somewhere from off to their right and had been loud enough to startle the wildlife into silence. Ling lifted the paddles out of the water and looked at Fern. She saw her own anxiousness mirrored in the Mari’s eyes.
“Stop bumbling around like a fucking idiot!” a female voice hissed out of the fog.
“I can’t see anything! Give me the glasses then.” A male voice, sulky, angry.
“You wouldn’t know what to do with them anyway—it’d be a waste to hand them over.”
There was a sizzling sound, then a pop of light off in the trees, followed by the sound of hands slapping against one another.
“No light! Are you daft?”
Fern pointed, and Ling dipped the paddles ever so gently, pushing them slowly away from the voices. The two warlocks had been careless, thankfully. But how many more warlocks were out here? How many that were more competent than those two?
Evening settled over them, the sun ducking below the horizon in the west. All they could see of it was a brightness centered in one spot, an odd lightening of the fog concentrated in a tight disk. It was hard to see anything in the half-light, but movement caught Ling’s eye. She lifted the paddles, letting the boat drift. She saw it again, this time behind Fern, and an instant later, whispered voices confirmed that their hunters were close.
Ling and Fern studied one another, debating. They were far quieter in the boat than they would be walking in this muck. But it was also a larger target. On foot they could creep from root to root; in the boat they had to stay in channels deep enough for its shallow draft.
“There they are!”
Shouts erupted out of the dark around them. Ling dropped down to the bottom of the boat, and Fern crouched as if she were about to shift into a dragonfly. Lights flared brightly in the trees, and in its glow Ling could make out dozens of warlocks hurrying forward. But the light wasn’t on them. A flock of birds erupted out of the trees at the sudden light, filling the night with loud cries as they took to the skies in fright.
Ling was paralyzed in fear. The warlocks were all around them. It was only a matter of time before she and Fern were discovered. Should they hurry on while the warlocks were distracted? Should they hide? They might be able to hide for quite some time, but that wouldn’t help them save Alyssum or seal the breach.
Fern pointed again, and Ling dug the paddles deep, pushing the little boat as fast as she dared. There was a rustle in front of them as a small reptilian head poked over the top of a tree root. It hissed, baring its teeth and snapping its neck frill open wide. Its eyes glowed with a bright golden light.
Ling recognized it immediately. She’d drawn one in the grimoire the day Treantos had boarded the Courser. It was one of his creatures, she was sure of it. She pushed away from the tree root, fearing an attack. The creature was not large, but those teeth were impressively sharp. Her heart thudding in her chest, Ling rowed fast, following as Fern pointed first left then right, heedless now of the noise she was making. She had no doubt that the creature had somehow reported to its master and that Treantos knew where they were. It would be only a matter of seconds before the rest of the warlocks were on their tail.
Another reptile hissed at them out of the dark, and another. She veered away from them each time, bouncing like a rubber ball off a hard wooden surface. Fern stopped pointing, staring around them with wide eyes instead.
“They’re herding us!” Fern said. “We need to stop running.”
“Tell me where to go. Where do we go?”
Fern closed her eyes, and a moment later she pointed once again. Ling paddled where the Mari indicated, watching the train of swimming reptiles that followed in their wake. The creatures no longer hissed and fanned their neck frills. Now they simply followed and watched.
Fern gestured once more, and Ling settled their little boat in a tiny pond that had formed in the curling loop of a tree root. The reptiles stopped just outside the root and lingered, watching the women’s movements. The two of them climbed out of the boat and set out on foot, Ling having to feel her way around the strangling tree roots.
The fog was wet, and the water they waded through was at times deep, and soon Ling’s clothing clung to her body with a cold clamminess she found quite uncomfortable. She laughed at her own foolishness—as if anything about
this was comfortable. Fern’s hair was plastered to her head, and small drips of water clung stubbornly to her eyelashes until they were dashed away by a blink. The silence around them deepened as they left the voices of the warlocks far behind them.
The reptiles followed them as they walked, their amber eyes small points of light in the growing dark. The sun had set fully now, and she could see by the golden glow of their eyes that many of the creatures watched Fern and Ling’s progress, while a few stared out into the trees. Every once in a while, one let out a soft chirp, and the others replied softly in kind.
“We need to hurry, Fern.” Ling said. “These reptiles belong to a warlock called Treantos, who is allied with Fariss. They know where we are. They are probably on their way here even now!”
Fern nodded and moved faster. It seemed like every branch and root conspired to stop Ling as she moved through the darkness. She smacked a knee for what felt like the hundredth time, caught herself before falling completely, and clamped her lips against the desire to curse loudly. She straightened to find Fern standing two paces in front of her, staring upward. Ling followed her gaze, fear settling over her like a heavy, suffocating cloak.
From this side, Shadowhold was a forbidding structure sitting high atop a tower of granite. The walls were built of massive blocks of smooth stone, stained dark from ages of sitting in the dampness of the Marique swamp. Not a single window or door marred the endless expanse of rock, and around it all was a thick caul of writhing shadow, shimmering wetly even in the dark. It throbbed as if with a heartbeat of its own.
Fern approached, placed both hands on the stone supporting the structure, and closed her eyes. Minutes crawled by. Fern remained unmoving and oblivious to the world around her. Ling shifted her weight from one foot to the next, waiting, staring at their silent reptilian watchers, willing Fern to hurry.
The silvery light of the moon peaked over the horizon, giving the thick fog an eerie glow. Ling shifted again and wondered for the ten thousandth time how they would ever find their way into a structure so completely cut off from the world.
“I don’t believe it.”
Ling jerked alert, looking around for what Fern was talking about, but she saw nothing except Fern’s blond head bobbing away from her and the tower into the darkness of the swamp. To her astonishment, Fern was chuckling.
“Don’t believe what?” Ling asked, as she stumbled after the other woman. “Why are we leaving?”
“We’re not leaving. I’ve found a way in.”
“How? Where?”
Fern didn’t answer her, bounding off into the darkness as if it were bright as noon, while Ling stumbled after her, gaining a dozen new bruises. At least they would all fade away in an instant. The reptiles followed.
After ten or fifteen minutes of walking, Fern came to a stop. Ling stepped up beside her to find a relatively broad pool huddled in the center of a thick glade of trees.
“What’s this?”
“This is how we’re going to get in.”
“But we’ve walked a good distance from the structure, and it’s just a pool—”
“It is just a pool. But at the bottom of this pool is a narrow crack that leads to a cavern deep underground. A tiny tunnel leads off that cavern, which leads to a stream of biolumesce. If you follow that stream back to its source, you’ll find a spring bubbling up from somewhere very, very deep in the earth. That spring, it turns out, is about a mile or so beneath Shadowhold. It also turns out that the spring turns into a small seep that reaches right in the center of that structure.”
Ling stared at the dark pool in front of them, speechless.
Fern looked over at her and laughed. She closed the distance between the two of them and put a hand on either side of Ling’s face. “The things magic can accomplish must be so strange for you, coming from where you do. But trust me, that route will get us into that fortress. Fariss has no way of knowing what openings exist in the earth. And even if he did, that is a pool of concentrated biolumesce. He will believe it impossible for anyone to come through it.”
The silent reptiles surrounded them now at the far perimeter of the pool. They stayed well out of the central pool of water, as if they somehow sensed that somewhere deep down in this very pool was something that could harm them, and they dared not challenge it. They all stared at her and Fern. Every now and then a pair of glowing orbs would vanish and reappear as the reptile blinked.
“Will it also get us out?”
Fern’s eyes burned into Ling’s. They were wide and so deeply sapphire blue that Ling could hardly believe they were real. The iridescent blue of the delicate scaling curved along the sides of her face in a striking swirling pattern. Ling was suddenly taken with how beautiful Fern was. She had no desire for the other woman, not sexually. She had never been interested in sex, even back at home, even as Evelyn. But she suddenly wanted very badly to be wrapped in her embrace. To feel the warmth and comfort of Fern’s body against her own.
She reached out with both arms, and without hesitation Fern opened her own, wrapping Ling tightly, pulling her close. Ling pressed her body against Fern’s for several long moments, wondering if this would be the last time she would ever feel easy affection from another. Ling pulled back slightly and rested her forehead against Fern’s.
“Will it also get us out?” she repeated, her voice barely a whisper.
Fern pulled her head back and once again looked into Ling’s eyes. “I mentioned before that Mari powers vary from person to person. Some of us can shift our forms, or see the inside of the earth. I can breathe under water. But Alyssum cannot.”
The implications of that washed over Ling in sickly waves. They’d get in, but how would they get out?
“This land is riddled with crevices in the earth, as is that house. We will find a way, Ling. Please, trust me. I will not let him have either of you.”
“That may not be up to you,” Ling said, closing her eyes. It didn’t matter though, not really. If she had any hope of sealing that breach and breaking the curse, she had to find Alyssum.
There may be another way, a voice of doubt insisted. There may indeed be, but Ling had no idea what it was. If she waited too long this path, too, might close to her. No, she would do this. See it through to the end.
Neither woman uttered a word, but an understanding settled between them, and Ling hardened herself for what was to come. Fern would find a way to get them out, and if she didn’t, Ling had the ultimate bargaining chip. Fariss wanted her; she would use herself to buy Fern’s and Alyssum’s freedom if it came to that. She tried not to consider that if he had Alyssum and Fern, he had no need for Ling after all.
She pulled away from Fern’s embrace, the cold, damp air rushing in to fill the empty places where the Mari’s flesh had warmed her just an instant before. Fern turned and dove into the pool in front of them. Ling paused, staring at the circle of silent witnesses that surrounded them. A moment later, she dove too.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The water was as dark as the darkest pools they’d swum through underground, and there was no biolumesce glowing around Fern this time. There wasn’t a rope either. They clasped hands as they swam, fearful of losing one another in the darkness.
The pool was not deep, and they reached the bottom within seconds of diving. The crack was so narrow that they had to swim through separately. Rock grated against Ling’s back and belly as she pushed in. She cursed the stone and cursed Fern for not being able to just snap her fingers to relocate Alyssum from inside the dungeon to somewhere far away from Fariss, but she kept moving forward. Fern was waiting for her just on the far side of the crack. They clasped hands once again and swam on.
The way became so narrow that they didn’t swim so much as pull themselves forward, kicking, yanking, and wriggling through one crack after another. After each one, they paused to make sure they were still together.
It was an eternity before they found themselves drifting through a space wide enough for th
em to once again swim side by side. Ling couldn’t see anything around them, but she could stretch in every direction without touching stone.
Hand in hand, they swam until they began to see sudden bursts of light as they moved through the water. Soon the water glowed brightly wherever they disturbed it, brighter even than it had been in the cave where they had cliff dived. It was so bright, she could see Fern clearly in front of her now, as if they swam on the surface during a full moon.
Fern led them without pause or hesitation. Some time later, they came to another cavern, this one quite small. At the bottommost edge, Ling could clearly see the biolumesce bubbling up from somewhere much deeper than where they floated. She could hear gentle phlumph noises as the bubbles rose up from that seam and burst into the water around her in bright flashes of blue.
The darkness no longer frightened her beyond her fear of losing Fern. She no longer felt her lungs aching to take a breath. She understood, finally, what she was. But the idea that she swam back toward Fariss tugged at her. She wrapped herself in the knowledge that every kick, every stroke, brought her closer to releasing Alyssum, to closing the gap, and to releasing Evelyn from her eternal sleep. It was enough. Barely.
She and Fern swam upward, away from the source, into a wide chimney that narrowed into a tight seam before widening once again into a broad and shallow bowl. Ling could see they were inside Shadowhold now, the light in the room above them clearly illuminating the heavy gray stone of Fariss’s home. She floated at the bottom of the bowl, Fern beside her, both of them searching for any sign of movement in the room. They had no idea where the pool was in the fortress, and there was no way of telling what would be waiting for them when they broke the surface. They drifted upward slowly, and ever so quietly pushed their heads up out of the water to peer around them.
The first thing Ling saw in the room was a massive bed against one wall. The billowing white bed curtains were pulled aside, revealing that the bed was empty. Across from the bed sat a massive desk and shelves filled to overflowing with books. Next to the shelves was a complex array of bowls and wheels that seemed to be scooping water up from the pool and depositing it into variously sized jars and canisters. Between the bed and the desk was a closed door. The room was otherwise empty.