Bones of Faerie03 - Faerie After

by Janni Lee Simner

  I met Nys’s stony gaze. “If you knew Allie at all, you’d know you don’t need magic to get her to heal.”

  “I know she has said as much. I know, too, how little human words can be trusted. The humans who asked to meet with us before the Uprising assured us they meant no harm.”

  I stayed close to Allie’s side as she ate. “No one with magic can lie.”

  “This is so among my own true folk,” Nys said. “It may or may not be true among humans, and besides, truth is a slippery thing. Given freedom to act, the healer could as easily use her magic to kill as to heal.”

  “I’d never do that!” Allie’s cheeks flushed with anger. “There’s only two times it’s okay to kill with healing magic: when someone is in pain and when someone’s causing it.” Allie handed me the half-empty bowl, but her glare remained fixed on Nys. “Magic is for help, not harm. You of all people should know that, living in the place where magic began.”

  Magic had done harm enough during the War. Allie knew that as well as me. Yet she went on. “The oath came from your people, didn’t it? It didn’t come from mine. Until the War, we didn’t have any magic to make oaths about.”

  “An oath. About magic.” Nys’s arms moved to his sides, one hand resting on his stone belt. A watchful posture, like mine when I was thinking of drawing my knife. “Tell me about this oath, Healer.”

  Stones were weapons for Nys. I set the bowl down, leaving my good hand free. Allie pressed her lips together, angry still, and she repeated the words I’d spoken for Karin when I became her student, words Allie must have once spoken for Caleb, too:

  Blessed are the powers that grant me magic.

  I promise to use their gift well.

  To help mend my world,

  To help mend all worlds.

  And should I forget to mend,

  Should I refuse to mend,

  Still I will remember

  To do no harm.

  “If I do any harm,” Allie said, “it’ll be by accident or because you make me do it. But I’ll never do harm on purpose, never.”

  “Tell me, child. Where did you learn that?” So cold, Nys’s voice. It made the room feel colder, too.

  “From my teacher,” Allie said.

  “And who would your teacher be?”

  Allie glanced at me. I shook my head. There were faerie folk enough who blamed Caleb for starting the War.

  “I could compel you to tell me, but in this case there is hardly the need.” Nys’s hand left his belt. “I know my eldest son’s work well enough, for good and for ill. I hear him in every word of this oath you speak. Tell me, is Kaylen well?”

  “You’re Caleb and Karin’s father?” Allie blurted. I stared at Nys, knowing my face showed how startled I was as clearly as Allie’s words.

  “Oh, not Karinna’s.” Nys sounded affronted. “I’m nowhere near that old. But I asked you a question. Answer it.”

  Information was a weapon, too. “Promise you won’t use glamour on either of us,” I said. “Only then will we tell you how Caleb is.”

  “I could make the healer answer,” Nys said. “I cannot control her thoughts, but I think I could draw information from her.”

  “But Caleb wouldn’t want you to.” Allie’s hands went to her hips. “You know he wouldn’t.”

  “Do not attempt to shame me, child. I know my son’s mistakes well enough. All the Realm knows Kaylen’s mistakes, just as all have known his true name since those mistakes became known. Much harm followed, when he withdrew his glamour from a human. Has he told you that story?”

  “The War followed.” I knew the story better than Nys could imagine, because the human was my mother; knew, too, that no war was so simple as to be caused by any one person. “Your promise,” I said. “You can compel Allie with glamour, but you cannot compel me, and as a seer I know things about Caleb she does not.”

  Nys turned away. Allie picked up the bowl, held it out to me. I ate what remained of the tubers. They held an overripe sweetness, near to rotting, that made me want to gag.

  Only as Allie set down the bowl did Nys turn back to us. “So long as you do as I say, I’ll not use glamour on either of you.” He spoke slowly, as if the words came at some cost.

  “So long as we do no harm,” I insisted.

  “And how does a human account harm? No. I have offered more than you deserve. I’ll offer no more—and Elin and I will have words about her keeping this from me.”

  Allie looked at me, and this time I nodded. “Caleb was fine when we left him,” she said. “He teaches humans now. Not only me.” She stopped there, with no mention of Mom or the baby. Good.

  Silence. I waited. I’d learned, as Karin’s student, that faerie folk didn’t feel the need to fill the quiet with words as so many humans did.

  Something in Nys’s expression thawed. “For this news, much thanks. Though Kaylen is no longer welcome in the Realm, nor within the shelters I built for our people here, knowing he survived the human Uprising means a great deal to me. My visions have been unclear on this matter, but they don’t reach as far as they once did. Those visions told me Kaylen survived for a time, but not how long. What do your seer’s visions say of him, Liza?”

  “Caleb’s coming here.” I made no mention of Matthew, told Nys no more than I had to.

  Allie’s eyes grew large, hopeful—and then Nys’s hands snaked out to grasp my shoulders. “Why would he do such a thing?”

  I drew my dead hand to my side, knowing I’d have little chance if I fought him here, with unbroken stone all around. “He comes looking for his student, and for his sister, and for—” What relation were Caleb and I? “And for me.”

  Nys’s fingers dug through my sweater, bruising me. “Kaylen and Karinna are not friends. He would not come for her.”

  “Yet they’ve always tried to protect each other.” I knew that from my visions.

  The links of Nys’s belt shifted, clinking restlessly against one another. “Kaylen ought not to return. He’ll not live long if he does. The border protections the Lady put in place shortly after the Uprising will destroy him and any who enter the Realm with him.”

  “Border protections?” My voice echoed off the stone around us, unnaturally loud.

  “The ruler of the Realm is tied to this land in ways the rest of us can scarcely imagine. If she truly wishes to keep someone out, she can do so. No doubt the Lady had her reasons, just as she had her reasons for seeing to it that seers can no longer leave the ways between our worlds idly open. You won’t hear me suggest it was something so simple as anger at her youngest son, or anything aside from the good of the Realm, that dictated her actions.”

  Allie and I exchanged a look. Caleb was walking—no, running—into a deadly trap. And any who enter the Realm with him. Matthew, too. The cold light couldn’t lessen the room’s chill. “We have to stop him.”

  “We need do no such thing.” Nys released my shoulders. I stumbled back. “Kaylen made his decisions long ago, and if he suffers the consequences of them, he is hardly alone in that.” Nys reached for Allie. “Now. Show me that humans can keep their promises.”

  Allie bit her lip. “It doesn’t have to be one thing or the other. We could go after Caleb when the healing’s through.”

  “Through?” Nys said, as if he didn’t understand. “You do not appreciate the extent of the harm your people wrought. This will never be through, not until the Realm itself crumbles away. We ease the worst of their suffering, nothing more.” His fingers closed around Allie’s wrist. “Since the War, I have done all I can for my people. I will continue to do so, and if there are prices to be paid, I will pay them. Come, Healer.”

  “Wait,” I said. “The border magic. How can it be undone?” Maybe we could save Caleb and Matthew, even if we couldn’t get free ourselves.

  “Undone?” Nys’s laughter was rough as stone scraping stone. “It cannot be undone, save by the Lady or her heir. The one is gone and the other lacks wit enough to act. Unless you’d li
ke to attempt to slit Karinna’s throat, as I have vowed to Elin not to, in hopes that the power will fall to the weaver. I would not stop you. Karinna and I are not friends, either, for all that I’ve thrown my lot in with her daughter, who believed Karinna’s presence might be of use to the land. Kaylen would have been a far more suitable heir—but the time for such maneuvering is past. Until very recently, I was not aware Karinna lived. Now, Liza, must I bind you to the wall again, or will you allow Allie and I to depart in peace?”

  “I’ll be all right,” Allie said softly. “Trust me.”

  It was Nys I didn’t trust, but angering him might lose us a chance at escape later. “There’s no need to bind me. I won’t try to stop you.”

  “You cannot stop us. Remember that.” Nys touched the wall. Stone melted away, a tunnel appeared, and Nys and Allie walked into it. I focused on my breathing once more as I forced myself not to follow them, watching as the tunnel disappeared, taking Nys’s light with it and leaving me in the dark.

  I slept, not because sleeping was safe, but because if I didn’t, I would lose my edge, like a dulled blade.

  When I woke, Tolven stared silently down at me, a glowing stone in his cupped hands. His silver eyes were wild, his breath ragged. I scrambled to my feet, forcing the sleep from my thoughts as I crouched into a defensive stance. How long had he stood there? His muscles tensed, as if preparing to attack—or struggling not to. I held my hands up, a sign that I wouldn’t attack if he didn’t.

  Tolven’s breathing steadied, and one side of his mouth quirked into what might have been a smile. “I will not hurt you.” His nails were clipped short now, but his hands tugged restlessly at his sleeves. “I will only listen. The green you carry is not so troubling, once one stops trying to fight it. That is difficult, but difficult is not the same as impossible.”

  There was a tunnel open behind him. I rocked on my heels, as if to back away, then lunged forward, grabbed the stone from Tolven’s hands, and ran toward it.

  A whisper of ice brushed my face. I caught the scent of something musty and old as gray dust trickled to the floor in front of me.

  I skittered to a halt. A fist-sized patch of darkness sank like mist through a hole in the ceiling. I felt Tolven’s hand on my shoulder, pulling me back from it.

  “Go away!” I commanded the dark, but it just kept sinking down, down, down. The purple light grew gray and thin as color drained from the room and the air took on the bleak chill of a rainy winter morning. I smelled the decay of leaf mold, the rot of old meat. The empty food bowl disappeared into the darkness. That darkness sank through the floor and was gone, leaving behind a pile of gray dust where the bowl had been.

  “Close.” Tolven released his hold and stepped around me to block the tunnel. “Too close. Do all humans move with more haste than care?”

  Color seeped back into the room like dye through wool. It hadn’t been lack of care that had made me seize a chance of escape. “What was that?” I eyed Tolven and the tunnel behind him, weighing other means of escape, thinking of how he had pulled me back from the dark.

  He could as easily have pushed me into it, had he wanted to. I waited, tense, listening.

  Tolven laughed uneasily. His hair was tied back from his face, twisted into a clear tail that fell down his back, making his eyes large and giving his face the openness of a deer on a path, in the heartbeats before it becomes aware of the hunter. “Surely the Realm’s crumbling is of no surprise to humans? You sent the fires that caused it, did you not?” He tilted his head, as if uncertain. His gaze was clear, nothing wild in it now.

  “You’re—”

  “Sane?” More laughter, gentle laughter that made me think him amused with himself. “I suppose I am, if anyone in the Realm can be deemed so now. It is the seeds you carry. Once I push past the fear, their voices are louder than the voice of the crumbling, and when I let myself listen to them, I regain my own mind. It is a strange thing, to be in control of my thoughts after so long.” He held out his hand. “Give them to me, please.”

  I felt the velvet tug of glamour in his words, but it was weaker than Nys’s, a small thing beside the pull of the seeds in my pocket. Could they truly heal a broken mind? The seed Karin had kept hadn’t helped her.

  “You are human,” Tolven said, “yet my words do not touch you. Why?”

  I dared not tell him the seeds were all that protected me from losing my mind in an entirely different way than he had, losing it to the force of his words.

  “I could try to take them.” Tolven shrugged good-naturedly. “But I am guessing you have other defenses in addition to those against glamour.”

  The seeds were my defenses—I didn’t say that, either. Maybe there was a chance here, a chance to get Allie and myself free, not through fighting but through words. Faerie folk took words seriously. “If I shared the seeds with you, would you lead us back aboveground?”

  Tolven rubbed his hands over his sleeves. I saw the faint bulge of bandages beneath them. “Above is fire fever, and what little grows there is far more mad than me. Below is shelter. Below is safety. There is nowhere else, save for the human world, which was so perilous it killed the Lady herself.”

  “Below isn’t safe for humans.” I looked from Tolven to the tunnel. It had opened for him, as it wouldn’t for me. “Can you lead us out?” If we could reach the standing stone, perhaps Allie and I could get Karin out of Faerie through the Arch and stop Caleb and Matthew from trying to enter it at the same time.

  “I can lead you. All the tunnels open for me. Nys saw to it, after the Uprising. None dare deny me free passage.” Tolven flashed a small, secretive smile. Who was he, that his desires were considered so important? “If I free you and your friend, you will surrender the seeds?”

  I chose my words carefully. “If you take Allie and me to the standing stone—the one by the ring of dead trees—I will give you one of the seeds. You have my word.”

  “Do humans keep their word?” Tolven asked me.

  “Humans with magic do.” Then, “I do, and would even without magic.”

  “So it is with me as well.” Tolven bent into a respectful bow. “I will risk this thing. I must leave now, but I shall return for you and the other human as I may. Until that time you must stay here, lest you upset Nys and so fall beyond my reach. See to it that you keep your word. None will treat you well should they learn that you harmed me.”

  We just might get out of here after all. I offered Tolven the stone, because Nys would know someone had been here if he saw it. Tolven took it and left the room without another word. The tunnel closed behind him.

  The stench of decay lingered in the air, but if any more crumbling approached, it was swallowed by the room’s own dark. I kept to the far side of the room, and I did not sleep again.

  I knew Allie’s approach by the light she held. She shuffled down a tunnel—yet another tunnel—and into the room, a wine skin over her shoulder and another bowl of food in her hands. The tunnel closed behind her as she stumbled to my side. I caught her and helped her sit leaning against the wall, carefully steering her away from the dust. Its smell had faded, but I didn’t know how long it would remain dangerous to touch. Allie’s hands trembled as she set the bowl on the floor between us. Her eyes were ringed with dark shadows.

  “He promised not to use glamour.” I handed Allie a vegetable from the bowl. If Nys wasn’t bound to keep his word, we had no power over him at all.

  “He didn’t use it.” Allie chewed listlessly on the tuber. “I pushed a little too hard, that’s all. I wanted to prove I would do as I said so that he wouldn’t change his mind and take me over after all.” Her voice was heavy with shadows of its own. “It was much better, with me doing things for myself. Only”—she reached for another vegetable—“I saw two more patients. One I could save, but the other slipped away faster than I could heal him. That happens sometimes. I know it does. It’s not like I haven’t seen people die, but Caleb was always there with me before. I was ne
ver alone.” She squeezed her eyes shut.

  I couldn’t make that right. I put my arm around her shoulders instead.

  “It’s all right. Nys didn’t blame me, so that was good.” Allie opened her eyes. “It’s so sad, the way fire fever makes everything come unraveled deep inside of them.”

  I shivered. “Unraveling and crumbling. They’re sort of the same, aren’t they?”

  Allie shuddered. “Don’t say that.”

  “Is it true?”

  “I don’t know,” Allie said. “The squirrel—it was only its body crumbling away, not its … its essence. That’s true for fire fever, too. The man who died … what you would call his shadow, it left him. It didn’t unravel like his body was doing. But that’s also true for all sorts of illnesses that have nothing to do with the crumbling. Don’t scare me.”

  “I’m not saying it to scare you.” I was saying it because when Allie healed, she was touching the fire fever as surely as she’d touched the crumbling squirrel. “I’m saying it so you’ll be careful.”

  “Of course I’m careful!” Allie bit fiercely into the rest of her tuber. “But of course I’m going to do all I can, and not just because we’re trapped here and I have no choice. Nys doesn’t understand that. It’s so strange that he’s Caleb’s father, isn’t it? I think it’s because of Caleb he decided to trust me a little, but he doesn’t trust you. I don’t know why.”

  Perhaps it was because I would still take out his eyes, given the chance. I had little talent for hiding such things. I needed to learn to hide them. “You’re Caleb’s student,” I said. “And I’m Karin’s.”

  “I don’t see why—” Allie picked up another tuber, turned it in her hand.

  “I think faerie politics are complicated, and I think Caleb and Karin used to be on different sides of them.” I took a vegetable from the bowl, too, doing my best to ignore the slimy way it slid down my throat.

  Allie set her tuber back in the bowl, uneaten. “I’m so worried about them. We don’t know if Karin’s even alive, and Caleb—he’ll do anything to get to us.”