by Hal Emerson
Chapter Twelve: Iron and Fire
It started with Tristan, as I should have known it would.
None of us knew how long we’d been in the Bower, though Brandel and Gwenel’s best guess at that point put us close to three years. Three years undergoing the same routine over and over again, having the same rules drilled into us by constant repetition.
Three years – and in all of that time Tristan and I had never been friends, not even close. Most of the others either adored him or feared him – and even he and Faolan had established an uneasy truce. But neither he nor I had any interest in even attempting the everyday niceties the others used with each other. That spark I’d seen when he’d returned from his punishment for running away, that promise, that small remnant of the contemptuous rebel he’d been – it only flared up when he looked at me. And if it was anything like the instinctive rush of anger I felt when I so much as heard his voice, I understood it all too well.
I never forgave him for putting us all at risk.
He never forgave me for trying to make him stay.
I can’t have been the only one who saw through him, saw through him to his core and understood who he was, but I knew for certain I was the only one who really cared. At least one of the others must have known as well – maybe Pinur Fe, who treated us all with the same kind of directionless amiability that covered up those eyes that saw too much – that understood too much about all of us.
But maybe not. Maybe I really was the only one who knew he was rotten through and through, the only one who saw the way his smile never touched his eyes when he was beaming at Igrin or Celin or any of the others. The only one who saw his true smile, the one that he tried to hide when the others were beaten or punished and he got to watch.
The one I hated because I understood it.
It started getting worse as that third year began. Darkness began to follow him like a cloud, a sense of menace like a physical force, and every move he made, every word he uttered, felt wrong, felt dangerous. He remained, as ever, the cruel leader of the others, but even they seemed to sense his turning nature, and soon only Igrin kept to his side during meals and at work. She still smiled and bounced her beautiful golden locks, but I knew that her demeanor was forced from the way her shoulders rose when Tristan turned toward her, his black hair covering his eyes.
His laugh became biting – like the feel of cold wind scraping against your cheeks. When one of us was hurt or chastised by the Ilyn, he started watching openly, not even trying to hide his eagerness. He would grin as the punishment occurred, or as one of us lay on the ground bleeding from a cut or a crushed foot, until the Caelyr came and took us away, and then his face would turn to disappointment, and his manic smile would fade to a burning scowl.
He began again to actively seek out trouble. Nearly every day Ai’Ilyn or one of the other Fae reprimanded him for intentional slights. Nothing Celin, Igrin, or any of us said could pull him back from such reckless behavior. Even Brandel tried, in his roundabout talking-to-the-wall kind of way, and he was nearly thrown to the ground and beaten for his troubles. Tristan’s little-boy charisma was still there, but it had begun to mature and deepen into something frightening. He snarled insults at every opportunity, at anyone, even the Ilyn; and hardly a day went by when he was not bruised and smiling through it.
He had lucid periods where he came out of whatever it was that was slowly coiling itself through his being, slowly squeezing any conscience from his soul. For a few days he was back to his old self – charming the others, using his baby voice with any of the Fae who wished to speak with him, pretending he knew nothing at all, that he was as innocent as the day he’d been born.
But still it worsened.
One night, when we were taken outside as a group to clear away debris that had fallen along the edge of the sentinel trees that ringed the Bower, I saw him staring off into the forest.
I don’t know what it was about that simple act that told me there was something wrong, but I remember the image very clearly. He stood, back straight, hair swept behind his ears and down to his shoulders, eyes narrowed to slits. He was breathing in deeply, his broadening chest swelling beneath his shirt, and it was as though he were trying to suck something out of the air and pull it into himself. I heard wind in my mind even though there was none, and felt the flaring heat of fire though I hadn’t seen true flame in years.
Tristan began to walk toward the forest line as if in a trance, and I immediately moved to cross his path. There was no doubt in my mind that I needed to do it – no doubt that I had to stop him just as I had before. My mind reeled and I was back to that night a year and more ago when I had chased him across the field.
He didn’t see me as I moved toward him, didn’t even stop to look around when I was at his side and clearly visible – so I stepped in front of him.
Finally, he stopped. His chin lowered by increments until his black eyes were watching me with the contempt he reserved especially for me.
“Go back,” I said quietly.
His upper lip twitched up to reveal his teeth, but then his mouth went slack and his eyes rose up over me – over my head. With a shock, I realized I had been completely forgotten. Something else had consumed him, had totally grabbed hold of his mind. I turned and looked over my shoulder and saw nothing but the dark shadows of the forest and the towering columns of the sentinel trees – nothing I hadn’t seen before. But Tristan saw something – something he was squinting at to make out. He took a step forward and his lips drew back and began to quiver, not in contempt or disgust but in yearning. His eyes rolled in his head and he almost lost his balance and fell on the grass, but caught himself with another step forward.
“Tristan,” I said, trying to force my voice to come out strong, but I was so unnerved I could barely form the word at all. This wasn’t Tristan being Tristan – this was something more. This was something worse even than the wrongness I’d felt coming from him over the past few days – something darker that was somehow calling to him.
Desperate, I shot a look over at Ai’Ilyn, hoping that she’d seen us and was on her way to reprimand us both, and almost went faint with relief when I saw her finishing her conversation with the Urden supervising us and turning to see where we had gotten to.
Tristan took another step forward and held out his hand toward my shoulder, trying to push me aside so he could go around. The feel of the sudden pressure against my skin sent a rush of strength and fear through me, and I shoved him away from the edge of the forest, knocking him back several steps. He caught himself and his eyes cleared immediately.
“You’re dead,” he said, and I knew by his eyes he meant it.
Faolan caught him in midstride. The dark shape of the slighter boy – Tristan had grown strong while Faolan had grown tall and lean – appeared as if from nowhere, and I sucked in a full lungful of air in surprise. He grabbed both of Tristan’s arms and twisted them behind his back, shocking the boy so much that he barely struggled. Faolan turned him away from the forest edge and spoke quickly, his voice coming in clipped syllables that wasted no time or effort.
“Ai’Ilyn is watching. I don’t care what you do to yourself, but I care what you do when we’re all at risk. If you do something stupid while we’re all here, we’ll all be punished. Pick up that branch – now.”
And for a wonder, Tristan did exactly as he’d been told.
Faolan released him as Tristan bent to the ground and picked up the branch, then Faolan bent to the ground himself and picked up a handful of rocks and started throwing them casually into the tree line. I was almost too late – but just in time I stooped down as well and pried free a large weed choking the grass and purple bell-shaped flowers around it, pulling it up roots and all as we’d been instructed.
Ai’Ilyn passed behind us, watching carefully but with no reprimand, heading in the direction of the other Urden who separated us on the other side from another group of children just beyond. When she was gone, we rounded
on Tristan once more.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Faolan hissed.
“Don’t you feel it?” he asked, stopping in the act of picking up a rock.
“Feel what?”
Tristan slowly stood, rolling up from his crouched position one vertebrae at a time. He turned and once more looked over my shoulder. “There’s something right there in the trees – something in the ground. It’s … it’s calling to me.”
Faolan looked at me, and I shook my head.
“I don’t feel anything –”
The sensation of a finger running down my spine made me shiver uncontrollably. I stumbled back a step, almost crossing the barrier of the trees and falling into the forest. I spun around to look behind me, so alarmed that I didn’t realize until after that I was standing beside Tristan, looking exactly where he was.
There was something there.
I could feel waves of it, like sound but deeper, rolling toward me from a single point. My shoulders tensed up and my hands balled into fists against my will. I gritted my teeth together and found myself taking a step back.
Immediately I felt lighter. I took another step back and the sensation faded away entirely, dissipating enough that I could hear someone making a faint whining sound, like a dog might make when in distress.
It was me.
I stopped and shook my head. Faolan had come up beside me and I saw him staring out into the forest as well, the same look on his face. He was breathing heavily and his pupils had dilated. I grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him back, and we both stumbled away from the forest.
What was in there?
“Stop!”
All three of us jumped nearly a foot in the air, but it wasn’t us Ai’Ilyn was yelling at. She was calling to the whole group, casually over her shoulder, and was motioning for us to return to the Bower. I glanced up into the sky and saw that the moon had almost reached its peak.
Faolan and I both laid a hand on Tristan’s arms, and he let us lead him away. With each step the feeling dissipated more, until I felt as if I’d almost imagined it. Tristan shrugged out of our hands abruptly, and we let him go. He was shaking his head and muttering to himself, but he was going the right way, toward the Bower. We followed him, but I kept casting glances over my shoulder, and Faolan fell into step beside me.
“What just happened?”
His voice was thin and rough around the edges.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled back, “but Tristan does.”
Faolan flicked his hazel eyes up to the boy who was, for once, walking in front of us. He was swaying slightly with each step, and he seemed distracted. He kept looking back over his shoulder, the same way I’d been looking, not even noticing.
“Something’s going to happen,” I whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” I said through gritted teeth. “I wish I did.”
“He can’t do anything with Ai’Ilyn watching us.”
“He can at night,” I said, remembering.
“He’s learned his lesson about that,” Faolan replied calmly, and though I didn’t voice my contrary opinion, I knew that Faolan was wrong. Tristan didn’t learn lessons. Tristan would throw himself against the walls of his confinement until he broke through or broke himself.
We entered the Bower through the wide opening and found Fae eating at the tables nearest us – Ilyn, Urden, Paecsies, wispy white-haired creatures I remembered vaguely might be called Sylphs, a few beautiful women that had flowing hair made of flowers and vines, and a number of others I couldn’t make out, all mixed in together. They looked up at us as we entered, and I felt a chill go through me followed by a sharp heat.
Why did I keep thinking of fire?
As we moved toward the far corner of the Hall that would lead us to the refectory, I watched Tristan. His movement was erratic – normally he stayed with Igrin or Celin and joked or made rude gestures at the backs of the other Fae when he couldn’t be seen – but tonight he was quiet, almost serene.
We ate dinner in silence – everyone was too tired to speak after the day’s work in the clearing. I was the only one who seemed not entirely focused on the bowl in front of me. Faolan, sitting across from me, noticed I was still watching Tristan, but made no comment, aloud or by gesture, only held my gaze until I looked away to Tristan and then looked back. He looked toward the boy as well and finally nodded, just a slight bob of his head that would have gone unnoticed had I not been looking for it. His point was clear – he saw no danger now, but if I did, he would trust my judgment. I wondered then if I truly was going crazy; I looked again at Tristan and tried to judge objectively.
He was eating like the others, and though his motions seemed oddly wooden, as if he were performing them by rote, there was no open evidence that he was anything but normal. So why was I unable to shake the feeling of dread that had settled in the pit of my stomach?
When we went out to dance the moonlight, I couldn’t help but look in the direction of the tree line, even though, of course, there was nothing to see.
“Ready!” called Celin, now one of the oldest and most enthusiastic runners.
When the moon reached the top of the sky and the dewy grass at our feet broke into a thousand reflected motes of light, Tristan was already in the midst of the field. The others and I raced in after him, the pure ecstasy of being in the moonlight temporarily blinding out all other thoughts. Tristan ran almost as fast as I did, yelping and shouting with abandon. I wove in with him, drawn by his recklessness, laughing openly at him and at everything, and he laughed back, free of malice. He saw me and ducked behind me, playfully ruffling my hair as he raced past, and I rushed after him, scooping up handful after handful of the dew, wondering at the change that had come over him. He dodged by the other children with barely millimeters to spare, filling his bag up first and drinking huge gulps of it, only to fill it again, laughing and shouting along with the rest of us.
But when the light passed overhead and the ceremony ended, he looked stunned, as if he’d been hit upside the head. I realized then that he’d been weeping – there were trails of tears leading from his eyes down his cheeks – and that I’d mistaken the wetness for spilled dew. The echoes of the pleasure from running in the moonlight still raced through my body, thrilling me with each heartbeat, but the cold dread that I had temporarily abandoned returned once more and took up residence in the pit of my stomach, resting there like a lead weight.
Igrin and Celin went to speak to him, taking the bag full of moonlight from him and handing it to Durst, who took it with his own to Ai’Ilyn. At the sight of his friends, Tristan’s face seemed to transform, and he fell into his normal charming routine, teasing Igrin and Celin and speaking acidly to the others while the Ilyn were preoccupied. But there was a gleam in his eye that was off, and as if beckoned by my thoughts, he looked up and caught my gaze. My heart pounded in my chest, but I didn’t look away. The temporary camaraderie we’d had – the only such experience with him I’d had in our entire time in the Bower – was over, and his look made that very clear.
I shivered. Why had it felt so right to dance with him?
“Follow.”
We turned at the sound of Ai’Ilyn’s voice and fell into line, me at the front, and within a dozen steps I realized that this time it wasn’t me tracking Tristan’s movements – it was him following mine. I suppressed a shudder as we entered the Hollowed Hall and began to ascend to our room.
We entered and were told to go to our nestles. We obeyed without comment, as was expected of us, and slid beneath our thick silk blankets. Ai’Ilyn watched us, and when she was satisfied she turned and left the room, dimming the moonstones sunk in the walls as she went. The only light left was the fading moon as it crawled down the other side of the sky, leaving shadows that crept through the high window and up along the walls.
My heart was slowly and steadily throbbing against the inside of my ribs, pumping blood and anxiety through me as I
tried to shut my brain down and find sleep.
Tristan wouldn’t be so foolish as to do something tonight – not with Ai’Ilyn watching us so closely. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t worried.
I started thinking about what might be in the forest, waiting for us. The sickness I’d felt earlier that night in the field … what could possibly have caused it? What was out there – what was … what was out…?
I dreamed of death.
There was a blinding white light that seared my eyes, and then sunlight – real true sunlight, like the light of my past life in the world outside the Bower. It was all around me, warm against my skin, but then the heat was too much – it was too hot. I started to burn like a piece of parchment – the sides of me going first, turning black and crisping and fading away to ash as I screamed and screamed. Waves of sickness rolled over me, and there was a metal taste in my mouth that I tried to spit out, but I couldn’t – the heat had reached my mouth, my eyes – it was burning me, every inch of my skin, stripping me away like ruined paper, leaving me cracked and bleeding and raw –
I sat up in bed with a heaving gasp and shuddered so hard that my vision doubled. I moaned out loud and grabbed my stomach, and realized I had doubled over in pain. My whole body burst out in sweat, and then I was suddenly burning up with fever. That wave of sickness rolled over me again, and I shook my head, cracking my neck as I violently tried to throw off whatever had a hold on me.
The feeling passed, and I began to cry with shock and relief.
The cool air of night pressed against my skin and smoothed away the dimpled droplets of sweat along my body. I turned and saw Tristan.
He was drenched the same as me, and staring at the wall of the Bower with eyes that didn’t see, eyes that I knew somehow were pointed directly at the spot in the forest.
That single moment hangs suspended in my memory, the center point of the two halves of my life. The two of us sitting up in bed, somehow connected in something neither of us could understand, something I still cannot explain. For an eternity we sat there, rivals since we’d arrived, each knowing that something was about to be done that could never be undone, not for as long as we lived. This night would change one or both of us forever – and there was no going back.
This time we would finish what we’d started.
He was up and moving first, and I jerked up out of bed and spun toward the door, but was far too slow. My stomach cramped again and I cried out, eliciting snorts and responding cries of alarm as I woke some of the others, but by then I’d managed to force myself to my feet and I was once again after him, racing through the Bower in what felt like a piece of memory doubled back over.
I threw myself out of the door into the hallway and saw a brief flash of light to my right. I turned to it and saw Tristan touching the wall of the Bower. His hand seemed to glow and I thought my mind was playing tricks on me.
He opened his palm and on it lay a moonstone giving off silvery light.
Shivers ran through my body. How had he done that? The children couldn’t control the moonstones – only the Fae. How had he done that?
I took a step forward and the bottom of my foot brushed against the wood floor, so soft that it barely made a sound.
Tristan jerked around and looked right at me, his eyes no longer blank but full of understanding and terrible knowing – like he’d finally grasped some hidden truth.
He smiled, and ran.
I was after him immediately, and only then realized that I was shouting at the top of my lungs. I was yelling names – any and all of them that I could remember – everyone from Ai’Ilyn and Faolan to Ionmar and Robin, even shouting for the Erlking himself. I rushed through the darkness, hoping that someone came after us, hoping that whatever Tristan was about to do could be stopped.
And knowing that this time there was only me.
I rushed around a corner I could barely see, but it didn’t matter. I knew these halls like the back of my hand now – I’d scrubbed these floors and polished these walls for years. I thought wildly that there must be Ilyn in the hall, tried to tell myself that I would have help in stopping him, in holding him back, but in direct counterpoint to those thoughts came a shout of surprise and then a heavy thud from up in front of me. I rounded a bend and saw a form lying on the ground, carrying a moonstone of its own that was slowly dying.
An Ilyn, green and white, her eyes glazed over and unseeing.
The shock of it tore me in two, but I couldn’t stop. He was in front of me, glowing with silvery light that had outlined his entire body in a halo, and I had to follow him. He rounded another corner, laughing hysterically, disappearing from my sight; I raced after him, yelling my head off, slapping the hard wood walls of the Bower as I went as if that would somehow help, trying not to think about the fact he’d taken down an Ilyn, that he’d managed to light one of the moonstones, trying not to think about what it meant.
We descended, me always just behind him, and panic was beginning to take me over, crushing my throat and making it impossible to breathe. How was I going to catch him? If he could take down one of the Ilyn, how could I stop him when I didn’t even know what he was going to do? I couldn’t do this on my own – I was just an orphan girl, an urchin – I wasn’t a true Fae, I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t –
From one step to the next, the sickness came back, and then changed into something that I would come to know all too well. It started at the base of my head then oozed down my spine like molten lead. I crashed to the floor in mid-step, unable to make my legs work, and I heard, far off in the distance, someone calling my name. I couldn’t make out the words, and I didn’t care. Heat engulfed me, penetrating through my skin and into my muscles, then my bones, until I felt energy rushing through me in waves.
The heat disappeared and silence rang in my head. My mind was blank, totally thoughtless and controlled. My eyes opened and I rolled over to see that Tristan had made his way down the spiral staircase that was the last obstacle in the path to the Hollowed Hall, and he was now rushing between the tables, going right for the entrance that would lead him out to the forest.
I picked myself up, and as I moved energy rushed through my body and set my limbs on fire, giving my legs and arms speed and strength I hadn’t known I’d had. I raced down the stairs, ripping a moonstone from the wall as I went in the vain hope that I’d find someway to light it as the boy disappeared ahead of me and the light disappeared with him, leaving me in the maze of tables that crowded the Hall.
“Stop!”
The shout echoed to either side of me, and I heard distant shouts from further up the Bower, maybe even from the alarm I’d raised, but I didn’t stop to listen.
Rushing forward I began shaking the moonstone desperately in my hand, clenching my fist around it so hard I thought I might break it. I had no idea how it worked or even why this one was cold and dark, why all of them were cold and dark save for the one Tristan held. What did the Fae do to light them? What was the trick?
I crashed into one of the long wooden tables, folding my stomach around the solid edge, and the wind was punched from my chest. My vision narrowed and I squinted, unable to make out where I was. The only light left now came from the dim reflection of the setting moon as slivers of its light reflected through the Bower opening. My head was spinning from lack of air, but I pushed myself upright and kept going, forcing myself to feel around the edges of the solid table, forcing my lungs and diaphragm to pull air through choking coughs even as stars winked along the edges of my vision.
“Give me light!”
Moonlight bloomed from my clutched left hand like the first tentative petals of a night flower, and my stomach jumped in shock and disbelief. I opened my hand and saw the moonstone glowing, and something in my head seemed to shift, like a piece of a puzzle long stuck but now rotated into place. The world seemed to narrow around me, and suddenly I had too much air in my chest – I felt as though I was about to explode.
I looked up and
saw Tristan rushing across the clearing.
I ran.
The moonstone lit my way and I was certain I would catch him, certain that this time no one else would interfere. I knew what he was going to do too, I knew it – I was the only one who’d believed it all along, the only one who’d known that he was capable of what he said. He and I were linked somehow; he knew I would follow.
My heart was beating against my ribs like a booted foot trying to break open a set of doors. I was running so fast that I was barely touching the ground, my arms pumping against my sides in huge propelling swings. We raced across the field – I was gaining. He crashed through the trees into the forest. My head and chest both seemed to squeeze at the same time, and my vision narrowed on the tree line and the gap right before me through the huge sentinels.
The trees approached at breakneck speed as wind whistled in and out of my mouth, cold night air rubbing raw my throat and making my nose run. I narrowly dodged a low-lying root, and then shot past the patch of field where we’d been working earlier that night.
Familiar waves of pain and nausea rolled over me as I raced after the running form of the boy, toward whatever it was that was waiting there on the other side –
I broke the barrier of the clearing and crashed through tree branches to find a narrow path beaten through the brush, barely visible even with the glowing silver light streaming from my hand. I raced along it, hearing noise from ahead. I stumbled over a root, pitched forward in the darkness and rolled over my shoulder, twisted and wrenched myself back to my feet, breaking through another clump of branches, racing over a small mound –
I stopped. I had emerged into another, smaller clearing lit by thousands of stars streaming light down from above us. There was more light, too – light from the moonstone Tristan held in his hand as he ascended a tumble of boulders that looked as though they’d been recently broken up.
Vertigo hit me and I couldn’t reconcile what I was seeing with what I thought should actually be there. The ground was rippled all around, as if it had been rent apart, and the jut of black rock was thrusting up into the clearing, made of hard straight lines that didn’t fit among the trees and grass and flowers –
A patch of that black rock gleamed in the night, brighter than the rest, and my mind saw it as an evil eye winking, laughing that I had come so close. My stomach heaved, and though I held myself together I knew that the waves of nausea were rolling from that rock – from whatever that rock contained. The world seemed to tilt improbably around me, and I couldn’t form coherent thoughts. I stumbled forward, dry-heaving as the nausea increased.
I forced my eyes to focus and saw Tristan grab the edge of the rock and slip, cutting his hand. Bright red blood sprayed and a sound that wasn’t a sound ripped through the night and tore at the edges of my mind, a sound of swords and shouting and the screams of children. My body spasmed uncontrollably, but the fever that had propelled me here burned hotter still, to the point where I couldn’t understand how every motion I made wasn’t igniting the greenery around me.
Tristan was laughing, a keening wail that repeated over and over again, and he pulled himself up and onto the rock, toward the higher end where the shining piece, the winking eye, rose to a single edged spike. The moonstone in his hand glowed fitfully now, like a candle in a high wind, sputtering and coughing, but his iron grip seemed to preclude any possibility that the light might go out. I stumbled forward farther, throwing a hand out to the ground when I stumbled, losing hold of my own moonstone, which rolled away into the grass and winked out. Tristan pulled himself the final distance and raised the moonstone high in his hand, holding it over the spike.
“STOP!”
My shout echoed through the trees and bounced back on us from every side as if we were in an enclosed arena. Tristan didn’t twitch or jerk in surprise, but he did pause, and slowly his head creaked around, almost inhumanly far, until he could look me in the eye.
“You,” he snarled.
“Me,” I hissed back.
I’d seen the inhumanity in his eyes – I’d seen the sick and diseased soul he carried around that was not Fae nor human but part of something that was all and only him. But tonight was different – tonight it went deeper.
I saw insanity, exhibited in the furrowed brow and the grinning, snarling teeth; the eyes that were round and wide as river rocks and the light that seemed to glow from them – the light that spread around him and engulfed his body in a white halo that made no sense, a halo that didn’t exist but somehow did; the split lip that he had chewed through himself; the rips and rents he’d made in his own shirt and pants, scraping away skin, mixing blood and sweat.
I stumbled forward and got one foot on the base of the rock spear; he spun back around and raised the moonstone high; I launched myself at him and grabbed his foot out from under him.
Tristan lost his balance and crashed against the rock as he fell. I slid back down, unable to find any purchase, and watched as the stolen moonstone crashed down on the rock, and Tristan hit the shining spike of metal.
The spike snapped off at the base and went spinning into the clearing, and Tristan went plunging after it. Caught up in my own momentum, I fell backwards over my head, crashed my shoulder into something that made me scream in pain as something popped loose inside my skin, and then I was on the cool grass, dew beading on my face.
I tried to rise and fell back down, screaming. I realized I was sobbing and that I couldn’t feel the pain that I knew should be there, but I was screaming anyway because I knew how bad the pain should be. I used my other arm to pull myself up and look across the clearing, and saw Tristan only an arm’s length away from the shining grey spike.
I lunged for my feet through the haze of shock and growing pain, determined to stop him, but made it only to my knees. He stirred and looked up, saw the broken blade-like spike, and pulled himself toward it. I threw myself into a shambling half-crawl, grabbing fistfuls of dirt as I launched myself across the clearing, racing. He reached out a hand, only just an arm’s length away – I lunged one final time –
I knocked his hand aside.
My hand fell on the broken slice of ore and closed convulsively around it. The pain was sudden and complete – my hand burn as if dipped in acid. I shouted and cried out, my mind reeling with shock, but enough of me hung onto my intention that I pulled the spike from the dirt where it had landed and threw into the tress, where it rolled into dewy grass, polluting the droplets there that were still fat with moonlight.
I gasped in pain and triumph, but the sound died in my throat.
The blade rolled one last time, and struck the fallen moonstone.
I watched in horror as the silver light flared, touched the blade, and sparked, shooting off in a violent reaction that I couldn’t understand. There was a blinding flash, a muffled percussive pounding, and then flame caught in the grass – and caught in the flowers that grew at the base of the trees, turning the blue and purple and yellow into flickering orange, into true light that came only from all-consuming flame.
A tree trunk caught next, and the ore was thrown by the moonstone across the tree line and back out into the clearing around the Bower, the clearing that I could just see here along the trail we’d taken to come to the rock. Smoke billowed into the sky all around us, but the source of the fire itself winked out with no pretense, the moonstone breaking into two halves and falling apart, the light and power gone.
I scrambled to my feet, and Tristan did the same behind me. I made it first, and spun to throw my knee into his temple as he rose up. He let out a cry and stumbled to the side, and I grabbed him by the hair and pulled him after me; he was so dazed he didn’t even protest.
I raced through the burning trees, dragging him behind me with supernatural strength. Smoke invaded my nose and mouth and eyes, but I kept going, knowing I couldn’t stop. To be trapped in fire was death – I’d known that all my life. My stomach heaved again, and I started coughing and retching as I shambl
ed forward. I needed to breathe to move, needed to breathe more to pull him with me – and with each breath I took in more and more smoke, until my head was spinning and my eyes felt as though they were coated with broken glass.
I broke through the tree line, stumbled forward a dozen more paces, and hacked up globs of black phlegm, ripping my throat raw.
Tristan gained his feet, pushing me away, but I grabbed him again and threw him to the ground. I stood over him, one arm hanging limp and useless by my side, the other grabbing his shirt in a claw-like fist. I stared down into his dark eyes, and I could feel the fever burning me up, giving me strength I shouldn’t have had. I pulled back my good hand, the one at the end of the arm that wasn’t hanging by a limp connection of torn ligaments and dislocated bone, and formed it into a fist.
I had to end it.
“No – changeling – STOP!”
It was Ai’Ilyn, running from the entrance to the Bower, racing across the clearing toward where I had dragged Tristan from the line of burning trees. Numbly I realized there were Urden rushing alongside her, dozens of them – looking like huge boulders and trees in motion. They ran for the forest, and by the time Ai’Ilyn was halfway across the clearing they were already quenching the fire with dirt that they pulled from the ground with their huge flat hands. My eyes rolled wildly in my head, jerking uncontrollably in fevered shock, and in the mad swirling of my vision I saw Faolan beside her, and knew that he had woken when I’d left; he’d been the one to find her, to bring her here.
Ai’Ilyn. The one I’d warned. The one I’d told to watch Tristan.
I cleared my throat, not knowing what I wanted to say, but feeling so many emotions deep in my gut fighting for a way out that if I didn’t say something I would simply explode with them.
“He tried to burn the Bower!”
She didn’t pause as she raced toward me, but I knew she’d heard.
“He tried to burn the Bower!”
She reached us and grabbed at me and at Tristan, and fury took me by the throat. She was trying to get him away from me – she wanted to punish him, or maybe even heal him from his burns – and he didn’t deserve it.
The blood pounded in my veins, and I grabbed her and threw her off of me.
The figure of the Ilyn went flying through the air to crash into the turf several yards away. Another cry went up, and I realized that there were more Ilyn coming now from behind her, following the first wave of Urden who had mostly quenched the fire.
I resumed dragging Tristan toward the Bower, not knowing why I was going there, not really thinking about anything at all but the horror of what had almost been accomplished by this boy.
I saw out of the corner of my eye Ai’Ilyn get back to her feet, but her steps were uneven, and her pace was slow. She stumbled toward me, her expression creased in equal parts fear and anger, and I turned around to face her, dropping Tristan to the ground.
“You never believed he would do it!”
She stopped in her tracks, and the fear in her eyes grew, overtaking and drowning out the anger.
“I told you to watch him – I told you that he would do it if he could!”
Others had gathered around us, but none seemed daring enough to approach. An invisible bubble had formed around me, into which none of the Fae dared enter.
And then another voice was speaking, coming from the boy on the ground behind me. I turned and saw that he had propped himself up on one elbow and was glaring at me with his black eyes, the tips of his hair standing on end, slicked into points by sweat and dew.
“You will regret this!” he was sobbing at me. His face was a mess of blood, snot, and tears, a primal mask through which he’d lost all dignity. “No matter how long it takes, I will see this place burn. You have not stopped me – you haven’t! I will destroy it! I will burn it! I WILL KILL YOU! I WILL KILL THE FAE! I WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING!”
The tether holding me to sanity broke, and the fever burned me with its rage.
I remember only still-frame images of what happened next. I remember smashing my fist over and over into something that felt as hard as rock, but which eventually gave way with a sharp crack. I remember seeing moonlight surge forward, likely the moonstones the Fae were holding, and then I remember it being over, and coming back to myself as I stood over a broken body. I was breathing hard, so hard that my chest hurt, and I realized my good hand was on fire. I looked down and saw the skin was broken and bleeding, and saw too chips of pure white bone visible where I’d sheared away muscle and flesh entirely with the force of my blows.
I think I fell down. The stars above tilted, and then there were shining silver lights all around me, and many voices, some that sounded like Caelyr, others that hissed and snarled like Ilyn, and still more the deep bass of the Urden.
“She’s been touched – her hand stinks of it.”
“What about the other?”
“He’s beyond our help.”
“Get the Erlking.”
“Is that necessary?”
“We lost one of the children, of course it’s necessary!”
“I can’t get there fast enough –”
“This Urden will do so.”
“Good – go! Search the forest – we need to find the source!”
“Watch her arm!”
“What –?”
A hissing sound, like disapproval, and there was more movement; I was tilted backwards and then my shoulder was on fire with pain at it was forced back into its socket with a sharp twist. This brought me back to full consciousness, and when my eyes sprang open I realized I was leaving the field, that they were taking me into the Bower.
“NO! STOP IT! LET ME GO!”
I fought free of them, and they let me go with hissing cries. I fell on something wet and hard, and rolled away from it, coming to my feet.
I looked down and let out a sob.
I stumbled backward, away from the broken and bloodied form, and turned around in a daze, my eyes sliding over all the gathered Fae and changelings, seeing Faolan and the others watching me with wide, terrified eyes, and then I felt a change in the group, and the Fae parted.
I spun and found Oberon there, the silver crown of leaves in his dark, curling hair, the beautiful lines of his face made up into a look of shock that I had never expected to see on his face.
“I had to,” I said. I don’t know if I was trying to convince myself or him. The words seemed to echo in my ears, accompanied by a ringing sound that came from everywhere and nowhere.
He took a step forward, and a murmur went through the gathered Fae, accompanied by a rustle of shifting wings and creaking limbs.
“Why?”
His deep voice boomed out and sent waves of happiness through me, even as I began to cough and gag once more as my smoke-burned lungs protested their usage. Just the sound of him, the musicality of his existence, was enough to make me proud of what I’d done.
“You fed me. You gave me clothes. You let me sleep.”
I was trying to come up with the right answer, and I felt that I was stumbling toward it. I took a step toward him, moving around Tristan, what I had done to him slipping from my mind.
“You gave me a home.”
The last word that came out was so forceful and intense I felt as though I’d shouted it. I swayed where I was standing, then looked down for a moment, my eyes unfocused, as I tried to relate it to the boy. The fever was still burning me up, and my thoughts could only slip through the heat in small bursts.
“He threatened my home,” I said, only making sense of what had happened as the words came out of my mouth. “He threatened me. He threatened us. He didn’t understand.”
I swallowed hard and remembered that Ai’Ilyn’s warnings had been more than just warnings; there had been a promise in them as well, one that held out a bright hope to me that I couldn’t help but reach for.
“Ite’Ilyn and Ai’Ilyn said that if we gave you respect – if we learned discipline and practiced it e
very day – that we would earn respect in return. They said that it is our right. We have the right to expect in return what we give to the other Fae.”
I gestured at Tristan.
“He didn’t understand. He gave hate and fear. He lied to Celin and Igrin and made them go with him the first time and they got hurt.”
I was trying to articulate something for which I had no words, trying to force my mind to expand in ways I’d never had to think before.
“He gave hurt. I gave it back.”
There was a murmur among the Fae, and I turned to look at them, my actions still jerky and my limbs still unwieldy. My arm seemed to work, but it burned every time I moved it.
“But why did you do it?”
“Because the Bower must be safe. Because the Fae must be safe.”
Oberon’s eyes never left my face, and he didn’t join in the whispered conversation. He moved forward and his silver crown began to glow, pure moonlight radiating out around him like a halo, and the Fae fell silent, staring open-mouthed.
“You don’t understand all that you have done – don’t understand that you have saved many lives this night, nor, I think, even why or how those lives were in danger. But that you were willing to put our lives before yours with so little certainty tells me that you are truly one of us. We owe you a debt, and it shall never be forgotten.”
He placed a leg behind him, bent at the waist, and inclined his head.
Utter silence echoed through the clearing, and then the Fae all did as he had done. They bowed to me in waves, each of them bending, even the Urden who did so with limbs that creaked and the Paecsies that stilled their wings and bent them forward over their heads.
He straightened again, and held me with his gaze.
“She is ready,” he said simply, and I realized he was speaking to Ai’Ilyn over his shoulder. “She has changed – I can feel it in her. Take her to her new quarters once the Caelyr have healed her.”
He took a step forward and addressed me directly.
“I am honored to have you here. I am honored to count you among my children. And I am sorry for all we had to put you through.”
He left. My knees buckled and I sank to the dewy grass, mind blank. Ai’Ilyn emerged from behind him, rushing toward me with her powerful strides, and I didn’t react, couldn’t even bring myself to hold up my hands. I knew she was about to strike me, knew she was going to chastise me for what I’d done –
“You wonderful girl,” she whispered as she reached for me.
The words made no sense. Her hands grabbed me and pulled me to her and I didn’t resist beyond turning my head away, staring back at what had been Tristan.
Caelyr came to me, their legs hissing through the grass, and I felt teeth bite into my arm, my neck, my leg. There was pain, a huge surge of it, and then numbness that consumed me and dragged me into darkness.