The Iron Raven

by Julie Kagawa

  “What...what has happened to me?” She held out a hand, staring first at her delicate normal fingers, then at the distorted view in the glass. “Is this a curse? Some kind of strange human magic?”

  “Nope, just their idea of entertainment.” I stepped behind her and grinned at my balloon-headed reflection, waving a sausage-fingered hand at us both. “The mirrors are bent in such a way that they distort the reflection. Humans like the grotesque and monstrous, as long as it isn’t real.”

  She took a calming breath. “This world is very strange,” she remarked with a frown. “I used to know a hag who could curse someone to look like this always.” Raising her other hand, she waggled thumb-like fingers in seemingly morbid fascination. “Now it is merely a trick, a momentary distraction.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel better, I know a couple witches who have threatened to curse me if they ever saw my face again.” She raised a silver brow at me, and I grinned. “I know, can you believe it? I mean, who would want to curse this innocent, angelic face? I would make a terrible frog.”

  “Puck, Nyx.” Keirran’s voice came from ahead before she could answer. “This is it.”

  We joined the Forgotten King and the cat in front of another mirror, this one making our heads look like watermelons. I looked down and saw that, for whatever reason, Grimalkin’s reflection didn’t seem distorted at all. Maybe he was too short. Or maybe the cat refused to look ridiculous in any fashion. It wouldn’t surprise me.

  “The Veil is thinnest at this spot,” Keirran murmured, gazing into the depths of the mirror, as if he could see something beyond the warped glass. “We should be able to enter the Between right through...here.”

  Stepping close, he raised a hand and pushed his fingers through the mirrored surface, like he was dipping them into water. Casually, he swept his arm aside, and the glass parted like it was a pair of drapes, revealing utter darkness beyond. A few tendrils of mist writhed from the opening and coiled around his feet.

  I sighed and shook my head. “It always creeps me out when he does that.”

  “After you,” Keirran told us. Grimalkin was already through the frame, vanishing into the black with his tail held high. Nyx gave me a look and slipped through the opening after him, her cloak fluttering behind her.

  A cold breeze wafted through the opening, and I grimaced. “You know,” I told Keirran, “I was just thinking I haven’t jumped through a spooky, mysterious crack in a while. Always a fun time with you around, princeling.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Keirran responded dryly.

  I snorted. “Stop acting like your dad. One broody, sarcastic dark prince is enough.”

  He just smirked at that. I gave him a return grin and ducked through the opening, into the cold, misty spaces of the Between.

  The Between, also known as the Veil, is quite literally the shroud between Faery and the human world. It keeps mortals ignorant of the fey, and if you cross into the Nevernever from the human realm, you very briefly pass through the Between, as the edges touch both worlds. It is also the realm of the Forgotten, and don’t ask me how Keirran and an entire race of fey can exist in a place supposedly the width of a bedsheet. It’s Faery; things don’t make sense, and that’s just how it is.

  “Okay, here we are.” My voice echoed weirdly in the emptiness that now surrounded us. Most of the Between was full of nothing, a void that went on forever. The only thing as far as the eye could see was the eerie gray mist that hung in the air and writhed along the ground. “I forgot what a cheerful place this is. Don’t you Forgotten ever miss the sun?”

  Keirran smiled, but a strange look crossed Nyx’s face, a shadow of fear that she couldn’t quite conceal beneath the hood. “Not everything looks like this now,” the Forgotten King said, seeming unaware of the brief flash of dread in the faery beside him. “The Between isn’t quite so empty anymore. I’ve given some of the Forgotten leave to build their own towns and villages, provided they can find an anchor.”

  “A whatsit?”

  “An anchor, Goodfellow,” answered Grimalkin in a bored voice. “A thing that exists both in the real world and the Between. Typically, you can imagine anything into existence within the Veil—an entire kingdom if you like—but it never stays for long. It’s not real, you see. Unless you have an anchor to hold it in place.”

  “Okay, sure. I’ll just nod and pretend I know what the heck you’re talking about.”

  Keirran lifted his head, as if sensing something invisible. “The Between feels strange,” he murmured, his brow furrowing slightly. “Chaotic. Fearful.” He shook his head with a frown. “I haven’t felt anything like this since the war with the Lady.”

  Nyx stepped forward. “We should move, Your Majesty,” she said in a soft voice. “We don’t want to linger here. If something spawns now, it might be very dangerous.”

  I raised my hand. “Um, hi. Yeah, for all you Forgotten types and know-it-all Furballs, can we pretend that there is someone here who doesn’t know all the weird intricacies of the Between and the Veil? What’s this about spawning? Are we very close to a frog pond?”

  Keirran took a deep breath. “The Between,” he began, glancing at me, “is constantly changing. It is...well, it is almost alive, in that it will latch on to any strong sentiment or emotion and manifest that thought into a reality. If your will is powerful enough, you can create almost anything in the Between. But without an anchor, those manifestations fade almost as soon as they are created. Without that keystone, nothing here is real.”

  “But things can still spawn in the mist.” This from Nyx, her moon-colored eyes seeming to glow in the shadows of her hood. “Emotions like fear, anger, confusion... The Between can create things simply based on what you are feeling at the time. And if you are experiencing a particular emotion, say, the memory of how terrifying it was to be chased by a pack of rabid wolves through a twisted forest—”

  “We might find ourselves running from said pack of rabid wolves. Got it.” I tapped my knuckles to the side of my head. “Sometimes I need a good clubbing with the ol’ clue bat, but I get it eventually.”

  “There is a ruin close by,” Grimalkin put in, sounding bored and impatient at the same time. “And I believe we must pass through it on the way to Phaed.” He rose, arching his back in a catlike stretch before he turned, fuzzy tail waving behind him. “I suggest we head in that direction, before something comes swooping out of the mist at us.”

  “Swooping is bad,” I agreed. “After you, Furball.”

  We walked in silence for a bit, the only sounds the hollow shuffle of our feet in the mist and fog. I didn’t even know what I was walking on; the ground was completely swallowed by a carpet of white, and the dim nonlight made it impossible to see anything in detail. If you have ever been on a lonely road where the fog was so thick you could barely see the shapes of the trees at the edge of the pavement, that was what the Between was like. Only there were no trees. Or sun. Or ground, as far as I could tell. Everything looked exactly the same, and if I didn’t know the mighty Furball always knew where he was going, I would’ve been a teensy bit concerned that we were walking in circles.

  “So. Your name is Robin Goodfellow.” Nyx’s comment startled me; I’d been about to start pestering Grimalkin, just to hear the sound of someone’s voice in the dead silence. I glanced over and found her watching me, an appraising look in her golden eyes. “You’ve been around a long time?”

  “A bit.” I shot her my best cheeky grin. “Not as long as you, apparently. But I know my way around the Nevernever. I’m no Furball, but within the courts and the surrounding territories at least, I’ve seen all there is to see.”

  “You’re part of this...Summer Court, yes? What is it like?”

  “Loud,” I told her. “Busy. The Seelie fey love dancing and music and parties, getting drunk on faery wine, getting naked under the full moon. Don’t let tha
t fool you, though—they’re not a nice bunch. None of the Seelie are. Oh, I suppose they’re not as violent as the Winter Court. Their idea of a good time is to rip your limbs off and beat you to death with them. But Summer fey will turn you into a rosebush for the fun of it, or feed you faery cake until you die because you can’t stop eating it, or sic their hounds on you for something as small as ‘borrowing’ their favorite hairbrush. I might just be talking about Titania now.”

  “Titania?”

  “Oberon’s wife. Queen of the Summer Court.” I made a face. “Mistress of Spite, Lady of Pettiness, and Monarch of Temper Tantrums.”

  “I see.” She seemed to ponder that a moment, brow furrowed. “So, not that different from the Lady’s kingdom.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far.”

  She gave me another scrutinizing look. “Keirran said you were Lord Oberon’s servant. What is it you do for him?”

  “Me? I’m his jester.” I struck a dramatic pose with my arms in the air. “Just a humble jester that he keeps around to entertain him. Also, his gopher, confidant, deliverer of love potions, and all-around flunky.”

  She looked momentarily confused, as if she didn’t quite understand some of those words. I guessed language had been very different back when she had first come into being, and slang was probably nonexistent.

  “What about you?” I asked. “What was life like in the court of the illustrious First Queen of Faery?”

  She hesitated. “I was...”

  Before she could answer, my foot kicked something hard and unyielding in the fog, making me yelp. Abruptly, the wall of mist drew back to reveal a half circle of decaying walls and crumbling stone, rising like broken teeth out of the fog. Overhead, the skies cleared, and a full silver moon peered out from behind the clouds, making me blink in shock.

  “Um, okay. That’s not normal, I’m guessing.”

  A howl echoed somewhere in the darkness, and everyone froze. Except Grimalkin, who flattened his ears as a corner of mist curled around him, and then he was gone.

  I glanced at Keirran and Nyx, saw the look on both their faces, and quickly pulled my daggers with a sigh. “Oh good. And here I thought this journey was too dull.”

  The howl came again, a raspy, chilling sound, like the wind moving through the trees on its way to murder you. Nyx raised her arms, the glowing silver blades appearing in her hands, and Keirran pulled free the iron sword on his back. Around us, the wall of mist began to swirl.

  Something pale and ragged exploded through the tendrils of white, lunging at my face. Instinctively, I leaped back, slashing with my blade, and felt the edge rip through thin cloth, as the thing whirled around to face us.

  It was... How to describe something I’d never seen before? It was like the merging of a wraith and some kind of monstrous dog. The body was covered in ragged strips of cloth that fluttered and snapped with every movement, but the face emerging from the bundle of rags was definitely canine. A slimy, disgusting tongue lolled from its narrow jaws, its eyes blazed green fire, and four bony paws barely touched the ground as it spun, the claws on the end of its feet like velociraptor talons.

  It wailed as it flew at me, and I dove out of the way, lashing out with my blades as it passed overhead. Again, there was that tearing and ripping of cloth, but nothing solid beneath.

  With eerie howls, more wraith-dog things emerged from the mist, a half-dozen ragged monsters swirling around us. Their wails set my teeth on edge and made my vision sway, and the ground under my feet didn’t feel quite solid. I staggered, and a dog instantly lunged at me, jaws gaping unreasonably wide to snap off my head.

  There was a blur of black and silver, and a shining blade stabbed up into the monster’s chin, impaling it through the throat. The dog screamed and flopped to the ground, rags falling away to reveal nothing but a canid skeleton beneath. Wide-eyed, I looked up as Nyx pulled back, a grim smile on her pale face. Her hood had fallen off, and her hair gleamed in the darkness as she spun toward the rest of the pack, glowing blades raised in defiance.

  “Don’t bother trying to cut their bodies,” she told me without turning around. “There’s nothing substantial beneath the rags. You have to go for their heads.”

  “Oh, so they’re zombie dogs.” I dodged and thrust as a hound flew past, stabbing my blade through one blazing green eye. The dog yelped and tumbled away into the mist. “Stab them in the brain and they go down, good to know.”

  I glanced over at Keirran to see if he needed help, but the King of the Forgotten was doing just fine. He whirled his blade over his head, then brought it smashing down on a wraith dog, crushing the thing’s skull. As another lunged at him from the side, he turned and threw out a hand, fire igniting in his palm, and the dog’s ragged body burst into flame. It howled, swirling in a frantic circle and igniting another hound that passed too close. Now there were two screeching, snapping bonfires bouncing around the rest of the pack, which threw everything into even more pandemonium.

  One burning hound reared into the air and howled, a sound that seemed to echo in the nothingness and carry for miles in every direction. I didn’t need to know what these things were to realize what was happening: that was a call for aid, summoning even more allies to the fight.

  I dodged a hound and stabbed it through the eye, and it collapsed to the ground in a pile of rags and bones. But answering howls echoed out of the mist, coming from every direction. I grinned and raised my daggers as the bays and snarls grew deafening.

  “Heads up, you two! More puppies incoming. Anyone got a squeaky bone?”

  Nyx stepped in front of Keirran, her twin blades raised before her. “Please step back, Your Majesty,” she said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. “Allow me to do my job.”

  Keirran frowned. “I’ve told you before, Nyx. I know how to fight. I don’t need to be protected.”

  The Forgotten closed her eyes. A hazy light appeared around her, and glowing runes crept up her arms, pulsing with the same energy as her blades. She took a step back, sinking into a crouch, her swords held ready at her sides. “I know, Your Majesty,” she said in that same cool voice. “But you are my king, and this is my duty. Let me be your shield and your dagger, as I was the Lady’s.”

  The hounds exploded through the mist, nearly a dozen of them, their bays and howls ringing in my ears as they swept in. Nyx opened her eyes and flung her blades at the approaching pack. They spun through the air, turning into crescents of light and scything into the hounds like twin buzz saws.

  Ragged bodies split apart, heads and skull separating and dropping to the ground. Half the dogs were dead as the crescent blades spun around and returned to Nyx. She caught them as if they were a pair of Frisbees and immediately sprang forward to face the rest of the pack. I was too stunned to respond, but it was okay, because the Forgotten didn’t need my help. She was a dancing, spinning whirlwind of death, leaping and twirling through the air as her blades cut the life from every dog that sprang at her.

  In a few seconds, the fight was done. The sounds of battle faded. The clouds covered the moon, and the fog returned once more, shrouding everything in gray.

  Keirran exhaled and lowered his sword. “Is everyone all right? Nyx? Puck?”

  I was still staring at Nyx. She stood over the rag-and-bone pile of dogs she had killed, her blades shining in the nonlight, her hair and cloak fluttering behind her. As the moonlight faded, the runes on her arms disappeared, and the hazy glow around her vanished as well. She straightened, the curved weapons shimmering into nothingness, and gave a satisfied nod.

  “Yes, my king,” she replied. “We’re done here.”

  I blinked hard. “Uh, okay. I think the only comment appropriate after that little display is wow. And possibly yikes.” I received another slightly bewildered look from the Forgotten, and I gestured to my arms where Nyx’s glowing runes had appeared across her skin. “I ta
ke it those shiny tattoos are not fashion statements.”

  “I...receive my power from the moon,” the Forgotten replied, her brow furrowed. “When it waxes, I grow stronger and my magic becomes more powerful. I’m at my strongest when the full moon is directly overhead.”

  “Ah, so you’re like a werewolf, fair enough. A very beautiful, nonhairy werewolf,” I added as she frowned. “I’m not even going to ask how the moon can appear in the Between, because I figure it’s just one of those things. Moving on.” I glanced down at a skeleton wrapped in a pile of rags and wrinkled my nose. “Can anyone clue me in on what these things were?”

  “Manifestations of the Between,” came Grimalkin’s voice, as the cait sith appeared, sitting a few feet away as if he had always been there. Casually, he licked a paw, then put it down and stared at me. “You were warned what would happen if you let your emotions get away from you here,” he said. “The Between will latch on to any strong emotion or memory and create a temporary representation of that thought. If you cannot control your emotions, you will very likely see them as manifestations of real things while we are here.”

  “Really? Does it also twist your thoughts into even more horrible versions of themselves? Because I’ve never seen these things before.”

  “No,” said Nyx, stepping away from the carcasses. “My apologies. These are mine.” She offered a rueful smile. “The Wild Hunt is a very old tradition. The Lady also had her hounds, and she would send them after those who angered her.” She paused, rubbing her eyes, and a faintly frustrated look crossed her face. “Though I can’t remember what they’re called anymore.”

  Grimalkin sniffed. “Moonwraith hounds, I believe. Though they Faded and went extinct ages ago. Shall we continue, before more unpleasant things show up?”

  He didn’t, I noticed, make any catty comments about Nyx’s sudden and unexpected transformation. Of course, after that whirling dance of death, I wouldn’t, either. As we continued into the fog, I looked back and saw the bodies of the dogs, the moonhounds or whatever they were, shiver into mist and writhe away into nothing.