The ground gave way. River shouted my name. I closed my eyes, expecting to be hit by soil, but the earth appeared to be made of nothing but silvery leaves, which fell in slow motion either side of me. I stared, so mesmerised for a second that I forgot about the branches’ death grip on my legs.
Then I hit the dirt—or I would have, if more branches hadn’t risen to break my fall. We were in a cave, and branches held both Hazel and Morgan captive. Dried blood splattered the ground, and bones lay in crumpled heaps, including human-looking skulls. A foul smell emanated from one corner, where the corpse of a large furred boar-like creature lay on the ground.
“What the hell are you, some kind of carnivorous dryads?” Morgan wanted to know.
Rotting trees, half dead, holding us captive. I swallowed hard. They were the darker Summer magic type, which fed on life energy. If necromancy didn’t work, maybe iron would. I grabbed the iron filings container, but I’d lost too many of them in the lake. The iron simply bounced off the branches.
“It’d be nice of River to come and help,” Hazel said, struggling against the branches. “Ow. Why’d they take us and not him?”
“Probably because his blade could take them to pieces.” I looked up at the high ceiling, grabbing the knife from my bag. Attacking the trees would provoke a reaction, so I needed to move fast.
The knife barely made a dent in the tree’s tough branch. I gritted my teeth and sawed harder.
“Doesn’t work,” Hazel said, hacking away with her own knife.
“Shit.” I grabbed the book, skipping for the pages that told us how to get rid of man-eating dryads. There weren’t any. Think, Ilsa.
“Humans,” purred a voice. A humanoid creature with skin like bark entered the cave from the far end. Ugh. Vale faeries. I didn’t even know what this one was, maybe a cross between a skin-eater and a carnivorous dryad.
“Let us go, you sick fuck,” said Hazel.
“It’s so rare that my pets get to feast on human flesh…” The creature stepped into the light, which didn’t do its bark-like face any favours. Its eyes gleamed like torchlights. “You’re a rare gift. So much life…”
Hazel swore, leaning out of reach of the monster’s blade-like hand.
The creature laughed. “Your life magic won’t work down here… we’re all dead.”
The spirit realm folded over my vision… and the corpse in the corner rose to its feet. I gagged on the smell. “What the—?”
The human-like bones lying on the floor shifted, then rose upright into the semblance of a person.
“Looks like your prey isn’t as dead as you thought,” said Morgan.
No way. He didn’t.
The furred beast’s corpse shambled towards the fae creature. So did the bony human remains. In fact, the whole cave was buried in bones. I tapped into my spirit sight again and reached below the earth. Reanimating bones that old required a surge of life energy, but I didn’t need to hold them for long. Just enough to get us out.
Bones reformed into human and fae-like shapes, pulling themselves from the earth. The fae creature backed up, terror suffusing its craggy features. I twitched my leg, drew back and kicked, hard. The branch’s grip loosened enough for me to cut one leg free and then the other. Hazel had already freed herself, and we went to Morgan. He was almost submerged in branches, his expression glazed as he kept the dead under his control.
The fae creature bolted from the cave. I ran to Morgan and hacked away with the knife, and Hazel joined me. Finally, he broke free from the branches, the silvery light fading from his eyes.
Morgan fell onto Hazel, groaning. “Might’ve overdone it.”
“You’re a genius,” said Hazel.
“Obviously.”
I snorted, then groaned. “River probably thinks we’re dead. Can you find him, Hazel?”
“Sure, if I get back to the path.” Hazel and I pulled Morgan after us, and we ran towards the only visible exit.
There was no sign of the fae creature in the cave, which had probably run for the hills, and the carnivorous dryads were half buried where the dead had pulled themselves out the earth. But the furred zombie creature kept following us.
“Morgan,” I said. “You can’t bring a half-rotting corpse home with us.”
“Says who?”
I groaned. Hazel shook her head and walked past us through the cave. “I can see daylight up there.”
We emerged into undergrowth. Hazel climbed ahead, grabbing tree roots to pull herself up the sharp rise. Morgan and I followed more slowly, having to stop and disentangle ourselves from various bramble thickets and tree roots—thankfully not man-eating ones this time. Eventually, we reached the path. If it was the same path we’d been pulled into the cave from, I couldn’t tell. Silver trees, silver leaves, grey light.
“Is River here?” I asked Hazel.
“Don’t get so agitated. We won’t leave your boyfriend behind.”
The path changed before our eyes, revealing River and the fae monster, his sword buried in its neck. Blood splattered his face, but it had the blue tinge of faerie blood, not his own.
His eyes widened. “Ilsa.”
Hazel punched the air. “I finally got the bloody path to move where I told it.”
River drew closer to me. “Are you hurt?”
“Nope. We escaped cannibal trees by reanimating dead bodies.” I glanced at Morgan. “His idea. I wish I’d thought of it.”
“I thought I sensed necromancy.” River looked me up and down as though scanning me for injuries. “Was this creature the one who trapped you?”
“Yep.” I shot Morgan a look. “Call off the zombie boar.” I tapped into my spirit sight pointedly, which showed me the energy reanimating its corpse… and I saw the path ahead, swamped in grey light. I hadn’t just seen trees like that in the Vale, but in the liminal spaces like the one we’d left the ghost in. Spaces which overlapped so closely with the Vale, it was easy to cross between realms there.
“I have an idea,” I said. “I think. Hellhounds can walk in and out of this realm all the time, right?”
“I’m not searching for hellhounds,” said Hazel.
“Search for a liminal space, then,” I said. “Once we’re at a liminal point, I can get us out. This realm does overlap with the Ley Line. Its magic—or whatever keeps this realm functioning—is tied to Death, and through that…”
“The mortal realm,” River said. “But I always thought the connection was one-way.”
“It usually is.” I held up the book. “But so is the way into Death. It’s worth a try.”
I called on the book’s cold, unrelenting energy, picturing the liminal space from before.
“This isn’t a liminal space,” said Hazel, pointing ahead. “It’s the forest. Looks the same.”
“Some liminal spaces look like that, too. Keep walking. Wait—you’re the one who can control the paths, right? You and River, picture a liminal space. I’ll try to take us there.”
The air went transparent for a second, showing a hillside beneath. Then it turned into woods again.
“This is where we got into the Court,” said Hazel. “No way.”
“You must have been thinking about it when you changed the path,” I said. “Okay. I can use the book to get us out.” The grey light grew brighter, and I held up the book, thinking of paths and gates, of ways between worlds.
The path solidified, then turned into the Vale again.
“Nope,” I muttered. “Come on.” I willed the book’s power to keep flooding me, and held up my hands. The air shimmered then went transparent again. With a push, like closing the gates of death, I shoved the air, and it parted.
Necromantic energy blasted me off my feet. The gate opened, wide. I pushed carefully, meaningfully—
And a pair of icy blue eyes stared back.
A startled scream caught in my throat, but I didn’t move or stop, gripping the book like a lifeline. The gates closed on the terrifying eyes, and I dropped to
my knees.
She couldn’t have survived. She shouldn’t have.
Icy water rose to drench me, and I gasped, spluttering, legs flailing. The cold sky of an autumn day wheeled above me as I heaved myself out of the shallows of a loch. I spat out a mouthful of water. Fresh water.
“Couldn’t you have brought us somewhere dry?” said Morgan, who’d landed in a heap in the shallows. Hazel picked a frog from her hair and stood up.
“Sorry,” I said, teeth chattering. The icy water had blasted away my exhaustion. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
I pressed a hand to my mouth. Holly… did Holly know? Had we unintentionally handed over information to the enemy after all? I wasn’t ready for this. Nobody should have the power to bring her back, but the fact that she’d survived at all…
“She’s there,” I whispered. “The Winter Gatekeeper. She’s behind Death’s gate. She saw me.”
14
Once we’d waded out of the loch—luckily without running into any of the resident kelpies—we began the long walk home.
“We’re clean of swamp water now,” said Hazel. “Look on the bright side.”
“The not-so-bright side is that our nemesis is alive. Or not dead enough,” I said.
“It’s not possible for her to come back,” said River.
“I don’t understand either.” My vision was splotchy, and my head pounded. “She’s there, but not on this side. Yet. I don’t know what she’s doing, but she still had her power when I banished her.”
And she was waiting for me. Whether she was behind what was going on in the Courts or not, I had no idea. But her survival meant things were seriously messed up with the Vale.
Wait—had I somehow been responsible for bringing her back, considering all the times I’d used the book? The necromancers were clear about the limits of accessing the realm of the dead, especially on the Ley Line. But I had no choice in the matter. The others would be dead if I hadn’t used it, and more would die if I didn’t stand between the Winter Gatekeeper and this realm.
Just putting one foot in front of the other was tiring enough. I stumbled forwards, and River put a hand on my shoulder to steady me. His green eyes were concerned. “Ilsa. Are you hurt?”
“No. I think the gate took something out of me.” I fell against him, and Hazel caught my arm from behind.
“Don’t overdo it. C’mon, we’ll get back home.”
“I’m fine.”
“Now you know how we feel with you mothering us all the time,” Morgan said.
“Someone has to,” I mumbled. “The Winter Gatekeeper… not just her. How did the Seelie Queen end up being the villain?”
“Of all people, I can’t believe it was her,” Hazel said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never met her before. But she has power, prestige… there’s nothing she can gain from working with the outcasts. We never even found out who died.”
“She can gain immortality,” I said. “For some, I’d guess anything is worth that. And if they kill their rivals, they don’t come back and tell tales. They stay dead.”
“It sounds like they’ve known for a while,” River said. “Maybe most of them wouldn’t agree with her approach. Some might want their lives to end after so long.”
“I think you’re being overly optimistic about the Sidhe’s attachment to being alive,” I said. “Not to mention their magic. Though most of them probably wouldn’t ally with outcasts because they’d end up losing their magic if they were caught. That’s worse than death for them.”
River nodded. “I think you’re exactly right.”
“But some of them would take the risk,” said Hazel. “Nobody’s going to question the Seelie Queen’s loyalty, are they? It’s the perfect setup. She hides behind her status while the others accuse one another.”
“But she’s not after the book,” I added. “Otherwise she’d have tried to take it from me. She’d also have known I could use it against her.”
Which made little sense. She couldn’t have sent Mum into the Vale, right? The Winter Gatekeeper and the ghost had both had personal grievances with the Gatekeeper and they’d wanted the book for power alone, but the Erlking’s wife had power.
The Winter Gatekeeper’s face flashed before my eyes again. Might she still be influencing people, even though I’d banished her where nobody could survive? Surely she couldn’t communicate with the Sidhe, at the very least. But those half-faerie ghosts could move anywhere.
Exhaustion dragged at my limbs, but I forced myself to keep going. Hazel groaned in relief when the house came into view. Only River looked remotely awake. I wished the book had given me healing abilities rather than draining the life out of me, but you couldn’t have it all. It’d got us out of the Vale, and that was enough.
Hazel unlocked the door, and we more or less fell into the Lynn house. Getting from the hall to the living room was a blur. I half-lay on the sofa, completely spent. “Remind me not to drag four people between universes again.”
“Remind me that all Sidhe are double-crossing bastards,” Hazel said, planting herself in the armchair. “For god’s sake. What in the world do we do now?”
“Go to Edinburgh and find someone in a position of authority who doesn’t want us dead,” I said, closing my eyes.
“I meant about the Seelie Queen,” Hazel said. “We can’t tell them that.”
“I can tell Ivy,” I said. “She knew the Sidhe weren’t immortal before they did, so she knows all about secrecy.”
“Might that be why the Seelie Queen’s doing this?” asked Hazel. “God—can you imagine accusing her of a crime? If any of us so much as insinuate it in front of any Sidhe, we’re dead.”
“Precisely,” River said. “The best course of action is to do as Ilsa said, and find allies on this side.”
“While they plot against us?” Morgan said.
“You saw how quickly the Sidhe will retaliate against you for perceived wrongs,” said River. “There is no way to safely pass on that information without putting our own lives at risk. If a fellow Sidhe made the accusation, perhaps, but there were no other witnesses. We need evidence.”
“Yeah.” He was right, unfortunately. To the Sidhe, power won over anything, even truth. Our word meant nothing at all. Even Hazel’s.
“It’s not like we found any in the Vale,” Hazel said. “Obviously. The Sidhe can walk in and out of that place whenever they like. Any of them might be traitors as well. And the Erlking… isn’t exactly keeping an eye on things. She already is ruling. Nobody will ever believe us.”
I woke up on the sofa, cold and aching, but more alert than before. My hair was still damp from the soaking in the loch. I must have passed out mid-conversation.
River sat in the armchair, his eyes closed, exhaustion written into his every feature. No sign of Hazel or Morgan. From the light streaming inside, it was dawn. I’d slept for at least twelve hours. Probably more. My body felt like it’d been… well, thrown into the Grey Vale, dragged through a swamp and then thrown into a loch.
The Vale.
The Seelie Queen.
The Winter Gatekeeper.
Panic clawed up my throat. I took in a breath, slowly, fighting to maintain calm. Okay. So nobody else has ever faced this before, and nobody will believe us on either side, and I’m pretty sure we’ve lost most of our allies… but other than that, things are absolutely fine.
Points in our favour: we’d survived. My family was still alive, if a little battered. I’d tapped into the limits of my power and used it in places even cut off from death. And the Seelie Queen thought we were dead. She wouldn’t come after us again… for now.
River’s eyes opened. I’d been too exhausted even to tap into the spirit realm, but he’d been watching me all the same.
“Hey,” I rasped. “Is it morning?”
“I think so.” He still wore his torn, mud-splattered clothes from yesterday. So did I. My jeans were torn from grindylow claws and grasping branch
es, and the witch spell hiding the mark on my forehead was the only survivor from my weapons stash. Everything else was broken, missing or damaged. Even the container of iron filings.
But not the book. I’d been sleeping with it clasped to my chest, my hands tight around the cover.
“You look awful,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. That book is destroying you, Ilsa.”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing wrong with me. How else should we have got out of that realm?”
“We never should have been there in the first place,” he said. “That talisman’s magic is both inside you and inside the book. If you keep pushing it to its limits, you’ll break first. The magic is too much to be contained in a human.”
“Ivy has faerie magic. Ancient’s magic. Whichever.”
“I don’t know Ivy.” Frustration laced his voice. “I know you. You know how many times you disconnected from your own body while you were sleeping? We’re not even on the Ley Line here. You could have drifted off, and the book would have let you.”
My heart jumped. I didn’t know he’d been watching over me in more than one sense, let alone that my necromantic powers had been activating while I’d been unconscious. I had no memory of it. Just blurred dreams, some of which River had featured in. I was pretty sure I hadn’t floated off into the spirit realm, because in those dreams we’d both been safe and warm and happy, not freezing and tired and scowling at one another.
“I can’t control what I do in my dreams, can I?” I said. “I don’t know, maybe I got shaken up because the evil spirit I banished appeared and stared at me from behind the gate yesterday. You should worry about her, not me.”
“I am worried about her,” River said. “But I’m more worried about what this magic is doing to you.”
“I didn’t plan this. It’s not like I found the talisman on purpose.” I pushed up onto my elbows. “But you know, if I hadn’t been there—if I’d ignored the message and stayed in Edinburgh, I’d be living that same life, drifting around like a ghost. I wasn’t happy, and the book opened my eyes. More than the Sight ever did. I can’t regret that. And I can’t imagine things being different. The person I was before—she doesn’t exist anymore.”
Hereditary Power Page 13