by S. W. Clarke
“Nearly drowned in the tub?” I called out. “Got dunked too long in the swimming pool by the local bully?”
He shouldered against the wind. “I’ll walk around. Meet you both there.”
Eva and I exchanged a look, and she shrugged. “He seems pretty set in his decision.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“It wasn’t getting dunked.” Eva stared after him. “I suspect it was worse. One time we went out to the pond on the academy grounds, and he strayed too close to the water and tripped in. He flailed, screaming murder.”
I avoided laughing. “That bad, huh?”
“That bad.”
We began walking across the lake together, and the farther we got, the more beautiful it became. An incredible dark blue stretched around us, old cracks in the ice zig-zagging deep into the lake.
But the rod didn’t illuminate.
When we had reached the middle, I raised my eyes to the bluff. Shielded them. “Eva, do you see a person there?”
She stopped. “I…see something.”
We remained where we stood, and the figure at the edge of the bluff didn’t move. It was too far away to tell properly if it was just a rock, but we humans were so good at finding ourselves in everything. Our brains saw faces everywhere.
Eva petted Loki. “Whatever it is, it’s still not moving.”
“Probably a rock.” We kept on, and when we reached the far side of the lake, I found I was right: a path switchbacked all the way up the side of the bluff.
Well, someone had been here at some point.
I replaced the rod, which hadn’t ever lit up, back in my skirt in preparation for a hike.
“I’ll fly ahead.” Eva set Loki down beside me. “Check out up top.”
Loki and I stared up the side of the cliff as Eva removed her cloak, exposing her wings, and took off straight up.
Then he swatted at me. “Why couldn’t you have wings?”
I stepped to the edge of the path. “Because then I’d be perfect in every way. That wouldn’t be fair.”
He groaned, walking behind me.
When we’d gotten partway up, Eva’s voice called out over the bluff’s edge. I stared up and saw her lavender hair hanging down like a curtain over her face. “You won’t believe it!” she said. “Come on. Faster.”
“Way to keep me in suspense, Whitewillow.” I gritted my teeth, thighs already burning as I forged my way up the bluff.
When we reached the top, I paused for breath. Loki streamed past me, a black spot in my vision before he disappeared.
Eva took hold of my arm. “Look. It is a human.” She turned me.
There, at the edge of the bluff, stood an enormous figure carved from rock. A massive stone horse stood beside him, and together they stared out over the lake.
One of his arms was permanently lifted, his index finger pointing straight out.
Aidan was still crossing around the far side of the lake, a small speck along the bank. It would be at least twenty minutes before he got to us.
I circled around the statue. It was old, weatherbeaten, but once upon a time someone had carved it with incredible precision.
When I came to the front, I discovered I was not even half its height. The man and his horse stood twelve feet tall, staring out and past me. He had a long beard, a sword sheathed at his hip. He didn’t wear a shirt, but he covered his parts with a belt and cloth.
Who was he?
Loki padded with me, sat by my feet. “There’s an inscription here.”
I crouched. Down at the base, someone had carved lettering I couldn’t read into the stone. “Eva?”
She came around, refastening her cloak at her neck. The wind pushed it out toward the lake; here on the bluff, we were totally exposed to the elements. “This thing is so old, some of the horse’s tail hair has worn smooth.”
I squinted up at her. “How old, you think?”
“I couldn’t say. Maybe Aidan would know.”
“If he ever gets here.” I nodded at the base. “Can you read this?”
She came and stooped beside me. “Not a word.”
Well, there went my Faerish theory.
“Clem”—Loki turned to stare over the lake—“what do you suppose he’s pointing at?”
I stood, turning with him. “He’s pointing to the horizon.”
“I know your eyes are far weaker and more myopic than mine, so I’ll help you out.” Loki upturned his face to the arm casting a shadow over us. “He’s pointing at an angle.”
From where we stood, I couldn’t properly make out anything about the angle of the statue’s arm. I had to back up a good twenty feet before I could see what he was talking about.
And he was goddamned right. The arm wasn’t horizontal.
The statue was pointing at something below.
I came back to the edge of the bluff, where Loki and Eva still stood. “He’s pointing at the lake.”
Now it was obvious. The finger angled downward.
“Why”—Aidan sounded completely defeated and breathless—“would someone put this thing all the way up here?”
“Welcome to the party.” I gestured him over. “We need your translation services.”
Aidan trudged over, his cheeks red. He looked more irritated than I’d ever seen him—until he finally turned around to observe the statue. “Ho-ly hell.” His historian’s fascination had engaged. All annoyance evaporated.
“He’s pointing toward the lake.” I nodded at my cat. “Credit goes to Loki.”
Aidan stepped toward the statue, raised a hand and set it to the thigh. “The lake, huh?”
“And there’s an inscription at the base.” Eva pointed. “Not in Faerish.”
Aidan made a circuit around the statue before coming to the inscription. He adjusted his glasses, knelt in the snow, and stared at it for a long time. He kept mumbling things, his finger trailing along the letters.
“Well?” I said finally. “Can you read it?”
“Yes,” he said. “Barely.”
Eva came close. “What language is it?”
“It’s the mages’ language.” He stood. “A dead language that hasn’t been used since before the Battle of the Ages.”
“The mages’ language?” I repeated.
When he turned to me, I caught a glint of something in his eyes. “It’s like our equivalent of Latin. My grandmother taught it to me as a boy to help read some old texts.”
“And what does it say?”
His breath crystallized as he let it go. “‘On this lake is where Hrungnir battled Odin—and died. And—’”
I pointed. “That’s Hrungnir?”
“And his horse.”
This was no coincidence. Except the inscription was so dull, so devoid of hints.
“But”—I gestured to his face—“look at that expression. He’s totally full of secrets. There’s way more here.”
Aidan shot me a look. “I hadn’t finished.” He turned to me in full. “Someone defaced the statue. They added a second inscription beneath the original.” The tenor of Aidan’s voice had changed. A nervous quaver had entered, which told me what he was about to say was the most important part of all.
This time I waited.
He closed his eyes a moment, opened them as though to bolster himself. “‘The chain cannot move. It cannot see. But as the summer solstice nears, the world becomes light.’”
I stood frozen. Then my eyes lifted to the arm, following it out toward the hand. And then I followed the index finger’s angle down toward the lake.
When I stepped out to the edge of the bluff, Aidan and Eva stepped up beside me.
The chain couldn’t move because it was frozen in place.
It couldn’t see because it was buried at the bottom of the lake.
And when the summer solstice came, the ice would melt away. The world would become light.
“So it’s in the lake.” My hands itched to make fire, to begin burni
ng. “It’s down there.”
“It’s down there,” Aidan said. “And whoever commissioned this statue knew about the prophecy.”
Eva peered over. “How deep is the lake?”
Loki peered with her. “Deep.”
“We have to wait until summer.” My hands went on itching. I was tempted to burn straight through the ice. “We have to wait until the lake unfreezes.”
Aidan surprised me by asking, “But why not use your fire?”
That made my fingers twitch. “Because if all it took was fire, it would be too easy. You remember what the prophecy said: ‘a hex will tether the cursed chain.’”
Aidan snapped his fingers. “Three.”
We all glanced over at him. “Three?” Eva said.
“This is an incredible point of power.” He pointed around us. “Three leylines surround us. Do you know how hard it is to cast a spell with this much power in the air?”
I made a face at him. “Should it be easier?”
“You’d think.” He looked almost giddy. “But past a certain point, the power becomes stifling. Three of them surrounding this place means their power is pressing against each other. It’s a massive amount of natural magic that your average spell won’t be able to penetrate. Think of it like a cloud.”
Now I got it.
Three interlocking triangles formed the trefoil knot. The demon prince had shown me three fingers.
No simple hex would bring out the chain. It had to be massively powerful. It had to be from three sides to press back the cloud of magic.
“I don’t just have to cast the likeness deception to retrieve the chain.” I stared down at the ice. “I have to summon two more of myself to cast it.”
I didn’t know if that was even possible. But if it were, I knew exactly who I needed to teach it to me.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Two deceptions?” Liara folded her arms under the moonlight. Beside us, a frog croaked out over the academy’s pond with rhythmic consistency. “I don’t even know if that’s possible.”
“If one, why not two?” I removed the deceiver’s rod, held it up. “Especially since I have this.”
Liara eyed the rod. “You said it allowed you to cast the hex before you even knew what you were doing.”
“That’s right.” I gave it an irreverent twirl. “So what if I cast the hex while holding the rod?”
She shrugged, unfolded her arms. “It’s worth trying. And we’re out of time to think up other solutions.”
That was putting it lightly.
I pointed the rod at her. “I always knew I liked you, Youngblood. Even when you tried to bully me.”
She scoffed, eyes glinting. “I wasn’t bullying you. I was protecting the world from an evil witch.”
“You did a shit job of it, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, especially when those wisps came out to attack me.” She paused. “I never did understand why.”
Oh, that.
I twirled the rod again, which I now realized meant I was a little nervous. “Rathmore told me the wisps were servants of the Shade. They contain the lobotomized souls of evil mages from centuries past.”
Her eyebrows went up. “But they saved you.”
“She was a fire witch. I’m a fire witch. They couldn’t tell the difference.”
She nodded slowly. “Which is why they gave you the key. But…if they protected you once, why don’t they protect you now?”
“I don’t know. Because Umbra keeps them in her office and the library?”
“You should be able to control them, shouldn’t you?”
I had never thought about that. But now wasn’t the time to be adding another job to the list; we only had a few weeks left.
I straightened. “It’s double-hex time.”
Liara swept a hand out. “I’m waiting.”
“Mealladh coltas,” I murmured, closing my eyes and clenching the rod tight. When I opened my eyes, only one of myself stood before me.
Maybe I had to say it twice.
I said the phrase again, but still only one apparition stood staring back at me.
Past my likeness, Liara tilted her head to meet eyes. “Your pronunciation’s gotten better.”
“But there’s still a problem.” I stared at the illusion, who stared back at me with a wide-open, innocent face. “She won’t double.”
“It might not be possible,” Liara offered. “You’re in uncharted territory, Clem. Or at least unrecorded.”
Unrecorded was the key word. Who knew what Raven Murkwood—if she were the Shade—had accomplished? Much of it was lost to history, but you didn’t rule the world without immense power.
I had a feeling about this.
If the hex needed to be delivered from three sides of the rod, only one person could do that. It had to be a fire witch, but how could you ever bring three fire witches together?
I was the last witch, of fire or air. The others were gone from the world. Which meant I needed the likeness deception to duplicate. I needed it twice.
Maybe that was the idea. Maybe the mage who’d sundered the weapon and buried its pieces set these requirements for their unearthing in the hope they would be nearly impossible. Then no one would ever reassemble the Backbiter, and the world would be free of its gargantuan magic.
Still, the feeling remained as I slid my thumb over the deceiver’s rod. Given everything else that had happened to me to obtain the key and the rod, this was possible.
But I had no idea how, and the more I stood here deliberating on it, the more frustrated I became.
That was always what preceded my decisions to screw around. Frustration.
I silently encouraged my likeness to turn around and face Liara, which she did. Then to extend her arms, hands dangling from wrists, and to say, “Fae brains are delicious.”
Liara rolled her eyes. “Zombies don’t make syllables.”
I made my apparition groan and shamble, which had no effect on the fae except to annoy her. A moment later my likeness walked right through Liara, fell forward into the lake, and disappeared as she hit the water.
Liara glanced behind her. “I’ll say this in your favor: that’s more control than I read was possible.”
I brushed invisible dust off one shoulder. “Wait until you see my vampire impression. I’m a straight-up Christopher Lee.”
She turned back around, eyebrows raising. “Clem.”
“What, you don’t like old vampires? What about sparkly ones?”
She scrunched her face, batted my question away. “Who cares about vampires? Resummon the likeness.”
I bobbed the rod like a wizard’s wand and said the fae phrase. As I did, my likeness appeared next to Liara with similarly folded arms and a scowl on her face.
Liara glanced left. “Cute.”
“You have to admit I do a pretty good impression of you. Pay me five bucks, and I’ll have her follow you around giving you praise whenever you snap your fingers.”
She stepped away from the apparition, and I tried not to laugh; she was so easy to goad. “Tell it to say the phrase.”
“Tell it to…” Then, as the implications processed, I nearly dropped the rod. Blinked wide at her.
Liara Youngblood was a true genius.
But instead of giving her the satisfaction of saying that aloud, I closed my eyes and imagined my likeness speaking the hex. My lips even moved, the words coming silently as I did so.
And as I did, I heard my own voice from six feet away, the murmured fae words coming back to me in real sound.
“Clem,” Liara whispered, “open your eyes.”
When I did, two of me gazed back at me. One was much fainter than the other, nearly transparent. She was a faint simulacrum, but she was better than nothing at all.
But now I knew it was possible. My likeness had summoned another likeness.
And I knew what I had to do. As long as the horn didn’t sound, I had to prepare myself to retrieve the chain.
<
br /> Time began to move quickly after that.
Nights I trained in the likeness deception with Liara, and in the daytime I pretended to struggle to learn the paralysis hex with Frostwish. She paralyzed me so often I had begun to resist it sometimes, which made her deliciously upset.
All the while, the horn remained silent again, and I focused on what I could control.
The prophecy. The chain. My own power.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Three weeks later, I was called on again.
Winter had broken, and we were in the early days of spring. I stood in the meadow with Ora Frostwish, who—after I’d resisted her paralysis hex a second time in a row—insisted I attempt the likeness deception.
“But Professor…” I began in a perfect-pitch whine.
“No more excuses.” Her eyes had gone flinty. “You’ve been training with Liara Youngblood—gods know how she learned hexes. I suppose it all began in the Kowloon Library when you two broke in.”
She was onto me. She was a fae I couldn’t trust, and she had seen me with the Shade’s weapon. Now she was calling my bluff.
I knew I had sensed someone in the trees the other night when Liara and I were training.
I didn’t speak. Times like this, I knew speaking would only incriminate me. And I knew she wasn’t going to let up, so I finally acquiesced.
When I closed my eyes, the meadow was filled with the low blast of the horn. It sounded over the grounds, raising every hair along my spine straight up to my scalp.
My eyes opened.
I had been saved. In the worst way, but still.
When I turned to Frostwish, her lips had fallen into a frown. “No rest for the weary.” I backed my way through the meadow. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“You won’t be back within the hour.” She waved me on. “Return tomorrow.”
I turned away.
“Clementine,” she called out.
When I glanced over my shoulder, she hadn’t moved.
“Gods’ speed to you, and safety.” She paused. “It’s an old Faerish saying.”
I stared at her a second longer before I fell into a jog back toward the stables. Her wish for my well-being had been delivered in about the same way I’d tell someone to die in a fire.
