Strangehold (Crossroads of Worlds Book 1)

by Rene Sears

  Elm walked down the hall and didn't let even a momentary glance fall on the door we hid behind. His face was frozen in glacial offense. He opened the door I had assumed to be to his and Gwen's room and my teeth sank into my lower lip in an effort to keep from making a sound. Rowan looked down at me for an instant, his face grim.

  Replicas of the girls lay on beds identical to the ones in this room. They were glamour, of course, but Elm had imbued them with enough of himself that they looked natural in sleep, shifting and breathing as if alive.

  "Please don't wake them," Elm said. "They've been feverish. This is the first time they've been able to sleep."

  Crane bowed. "Very well. They may rest. But we must not keep her majesty waiting any longer than we already have."

  Elm bowed and strode off, not betraying his daughters' actual location with so much as a glance. Crane followed, long neck undulating with each step. How long had Elm been prepared for this? We listened as their footsteps dopplered away, as the door closed.

  "Dad..." one of the girls whispered behind me.

  "There's no time to lose," Rowan said. "We must go at once."

  "But Dad—" Iliesa said.

  "I'm sorry," I said to her, then turned to take in Igraine as well. "Your mother asked me to protect you, and your father asked me again today. It's not safe here for you, not right now. Until your parents are sure it's all right, you need to stay with me."

  "We don't know you," Igraine said. Her voice was calm, but her fists were clenched at her sides. "I want Mom and Dad."

  "And they want you too," I said. "But more than that, they want to be sure you're okay, and I can't guarantee that here. Please."

  "If we wait here until another lackey comes back, you will find yourself suffering the queen's hospitality," Rowan said. "I have guested in her dungeon before, and you would not like it there—and if your mother is there, it will grieve her to see you."

  "Igraine," Iliesa said quietly, and they traded another look that held a conversation. Igraine nodded, and relief blossomed in my heart. I'd have dragged them away if I had to, but that wasn't how I wanted to start their time with me, however long it ended up lasting.

  "Do you have coats or cloaks? Preferably with hoods?" Rowan glanced toward a standing wardrobe in the corner of the room, and under his frown, they scrambled to find cloaks, in matching green with elm leaves in a paler shade all around the hem. "Pull the hoods forward to shadow your faces," Rowan instructed as he knelt to sever the embroidered hems. Iliesa flinched as the knife severed the fabric, but she hushed at a look from her sister.

  "Come on," I said, once they were more-or-less disguised. We walked down the hallway, past the sleeping simulacra lord Elm had made. Iliesa shivered as she took them in. I picked up the packs their father had left for them and handed each girl one. Then I pulled the disc Hawthorn had given me from my pocket. I had hardly looked at it when she gave it to me. The disc fit comfortably in the palm of my hand, dichroic glass in shades of green, purple, and blue.

  "How does it work?" Rowan asked.

  I suppressed the urge to tell him he knew as much as I did, and sent a tendril of magic from the ouroboros knot at my shoulder into the disc. A tiny yellow light swirled out of the design and wandered to the left end of the disc, where it sat, pulsing gently. "Like a compass, I think. Let's follow it."

  "You think?" Igraine's voice pitched high.

  "We need to stay quiet and stick together," Rowan said. "I'll lead, with you girls behind me. Morgan, follow behind them. If we run across anyone, let me do the talking." I passed him the disc. He watched the light for a moment, then sighed and said in low tones, just to me. "I suppose we could not hope for the door to still be in my quarters. This way leads to the wild woods."

  "Isn't that better than the dungeons, or behind the queen's throne?"

  He made a tiny gesture with one hand that I figured was the fae equivalent of warding off the evil eye. "Let us hope so." He started walking and the girls fell in behind him. They leaned toward each other, and one—I couldn’t tell who, cloaked as they were—reached out and met the other's hand, reaching out toward her. My chest ached with worry for Gwen, for them, even for Elm, whom I hadn't thought enough of until now, and with the sense of impending grief to add to that which I already bore. I promised myself a chance to let loose and feel it—when the girls were safe away from Faerie. I started walking, the sidheblade bracelet a comforting weight at my wrist.

  Rowan walked through the maze of archways and houses. A few fae watched from afar—lords and ladies in jewel-bright clothes, small winged creatures like a child's idea of a fairy, melds of people and animals, melds of people and trees, stranger things that were hard to describe. I kept my head down to keep myself from staring.

  Rowan turned down a path that was gravel instead of flagstones. A flag of black fabric swathed a post at a crossroads and Rowan frowned at it for a long moment before shaking his head and walking on. We were moving away from the residences now. There were still a few outbuildings, and what looked like stables, and beyond that, fields. Roads led away, and a little town or village dotted a hill in the distance. But we were going the other way, toward the wood that smudged the horizon, blurring it with greens and blues.

  The gravel path became a dirt trail, and the growth around us got higher and wilder. The air smelled of grass and honey, and bugs buzzed in the plants. I felt eyes on the back of my neck, but no matter how I looked, I didn't see anyone. I drew closer to the girls. After perhaps half an hour of walking, the woods getting larger and clearer as we drew closer, Rowan stopped and turned back to all of us. His eyebrows were drawn together, a small line marring his smooth brow. "We must be careful from here on out," he said. "Stay close together and stay alert. This is the oldest part of Faerie, and there are things here outside even the queen's knowledge. And...something feels—off."

  "Off?" I looked at him.

  He shook his head. "It's been so long since I've been here, I'm not sure...Well. We need to be careful regardless. The woods do not reward carelessness kindly." He handed me the disc. "I don't know quite where the door will be. The wild wood changes and shifts. If anything happens, get the girls to the door."

  "What about you?"

  He lips twisted in a crooked not-quite-smile. "I'm safer underhill than any of you, at the moment. I'll find you when I can."

  An awkward feeling of something not quite obligation twisted my chest. "Rowan—if it's easier—you don't have to find us. If you need to take care of things here—I know you were trying to get back here before we met—" I took a breath. "You've done so much to help us. To help me. Don't feel like you have to keep doing it."

  His smile transformed into something real, something directed at me. I would almost have thought it glamour, but the star on my wrist was quiet. "Morgan," he said. "I have helped you because I want to. And I'll find you because I want to." The awkward feeling bloomed into something warmer. He turned back to the trail ahead before I could come up with a response. It didn't matter. I was glad he was with us.

  "All right then. Let's find our door." I started walking. Igraine and Iliesa moved close behind me, and Rowan took tail this time.

  "Mother told us about overhill," Igraine said softly as we walked.

  "What did she say?" I prompted when she fell silent.

  "She told us about movies," Iliesa said wistfully. "Like glamour tableaux, but the same every time."

  "She told us about pizza," Igraine said.

  "And French fries."

  "Did she ever say anything about school?" I asked.

  "We had tutors," Iliesa offered.

  "We'll get all that sorted when we get home," I told them, but I wondered—did she tell them about me? Did she tell them about our parents? The thought of going home tensed the muscles in my shoulders; what was happening there? Who else had died? Time ran differently in Faerie. I selfishly hoped that by the time we got back overhill, maybe the Savannah flu would be dealt with, and I coul
d take the girls home and just worry about them and their parents.

  The trees drew closer around the trail. The shadows were blues and purples cast by a thousand shades of green, and the breeze was cool and smelled of pine. Some trees I recognized, but some had no counterpart on earth. I walked slowly, aware of every sound: birdsong, the rustle of leaves in the wind, the occasional louder crash of some small animal moving through the undergrowth, the distant gurgle of running water.

  The trail seemed to be headed the same direction the glass wanted us to go, for now; I commented on it, and Rowan said, "If we are lucky, the woods are molding themselves to our intent. Sometimes the trail takes you where you want to go."

  "What happens when it doesn't?" Igraine asked.

  Rowan said nothing.

  The splash of water rushing over rocks grew louder to our right, and the trail curved to meet it. The light on the disc agreed with the way we were heading, and I thought it was getting brighter. I stopped and held it up to show Rowan and the girls. Rowan's face lightened, and Iliesa said, "Does that mean we're near? Maybe we'll get through the woods and nothing will happen."

  I bit my lip and reminded myself she'd never seen a horror movie. "We're not through yet," was all I said.

  The trail bent around a stand of trees and the sight of the river stopped me in my tracks. It was not water lapping the pebbled banks, but blood. It was a disconcerting sight. My first, prosaic thought, besides ewwww, was Why does it not clot? "Where does it come from?" I asked instead.

  "We are now at the beating heart of Faerie," Rowan said, right by my ear. I hadn't heard him walk up over the sound of the river. "The court is its face, the veneer of civilization over the primal instincts. Here, there is no such mask. We must be very careful."

  The girls came closer, and we all stood for a moment and contemplated the awful expanse of liquid before us. Little insects, red and shiny as jewels, buzzed over the river, dipping down to skim the surface. The air had a metallic tang that coated the back of my mouth. For forty days and forty nights/ He wade thro red blude to the knee,/ And he saw neither sun nor moon, / But heard the roaring of the sea, I thought. The river wasn't so wide as in the Child ballad, though. I could see the opposite bank, where the trail resumed winding through the forest. But it was wide enough that there was a small island in the middle of the river. There was no obvious means across.

  The light on the disc was pointing to the island rather than the trail on the other side.

  It was too far to swing across the water, not that I saw convenient hanging vines in any case. A little boat failed to be serendipitously moored by the side of the trail, either.

  "How do we cross?" Iliesa asked, and I blessed her for saying it so I didn't have to.

  Rowan looked at the flowing blood for a moment longer, maybe hoping as I was for a bridge to suddenly rise from the river. He picked up a fallen branch and probed the liquid. "We wade across," he decided.

  "Wade?" Iliesa's dismay was obvious, and I didn’t feel much better about it.

  "Ugh," said Igraine.

  "Is it safe?" I met his gaze. His brow was furrowed again.

  "As much as anything here. The river itself is only blood and cannot harm you. I worry about what might live in it." He reached forward with the branch again, feeling for hazards. "Follow in my footsteps exactly."

  He stepped into the river, blood splashing his boots. Igraine and Iliesa traded a look, then stepped in together, holding hands. I followed immediately, sidheblade at the ready in its silver bracelet. I wouldn't use it unless I must, because any fae with the slightest sensitivity could feel it, but if it came down to the girls' lives, I'd use it without hesitation, and let them find us.

  The river squelched around my hiking boots, bloody mud sucking at my feet. Little stones or clumps of mud—or little blood fishes, for all I knew—hit against my ankles, not hard enough to knock me off balance, just enough to keep me worried they might. As we waded deeper, it sloshed over my boots, wetting my jeans and trickling down into my socks. It was horribly warm: body temperature. The girls shuddered in front of me, grasping at each others' hands as we lurched across the river. I wished I had someone's hand to hold. Instead I stumbled on, half my attention on the twins, half on the river, ready for something horrible and many-toothed to erupt from the liquid.

  We were almost across with no worse than the fishes nipping at our ankles and the blood itself clotting against our skin. There wasn't a path out of the water—that would have been too easy—but roots looped in and out of the eyot's bank, forming handholds and footholds that were almost a ladder. Rowan could scramble up first, and then I could boost the girls and he could pull them up—

  Blood eddied in front of us. Rowan tensed and flung a hand out in warning. The girls froze, and I closed the short distance between us. Something rose from the river, head bent, black-furred shoulders rippling with muscle. Red streamed from it, slicking the fur back. Its head slowly raised, yellow eyes blinking away blood. I had expected a phouka or a jenny-in-the-water, but this was a great black dog with a heavy muzzle and fangs the length of my fingers at least. It loomed over us, taller than Rowan by half, and it was the black of a starless night, of the death of hope. It opened its jaws and a red tongue flopped out.

  "Son of Faerie, you've strayed far from home," it rumbled. "Your choice of companions would interest your mother."

  "She is not here, yath hound," Rowan called up at it, "and my companions are of no interest to anyone but me." I cupped the disc in the palm of my hand, looking at the island jutting out of the river, a tangle of trees and brush—as hard as it was to look at anything but the dog.

  The yath hound laughed like the creaking of cemetery gates. "No princeling was ever so innocent." The glass glowed gently, the yellow light bright in front of us. The largest tree on the eyot was a great oak, its branches trailing vines and moss. The trunk was fat, so big around that all four of our group could have stood around it and maybe, if we stretched out our arms, our fingertips would brush. Lightning had struck it at some point, and the trunk had split. It was hard to see from this angle, but as I watched, faint yellow light washed over the crevice in the wood. There was our door.

  "I'm no prince," Rowan snapped, "only a bastard changeling, of no use to anyone except as a blade."

  The hound yawned, showing its great teeth, sending a wave of charnel-house breath over us. "You cannot truly believe that, or you would not be here, attempting to move pieces about the game board. Other players will notice your move, son of Faerie. You will no longer be able to hide overhill." If we could get past the dog and pull ourselves up the bank, it would only take an instant to get to the tree.

  "I was not hiding—" Rowan started, then stopped. For a long moment, the only sound was blood lapping against the bank, the buzz of insects, and the loud panting of the hound's breath. Rowan stepped closer to the great dog and tilted his head up at it. "On whose behalf are you here?"

  "I could tell you it was my own, or that of Faerie itself, but I think you know better. Nothing happens here that your mother doesn't know of it, sooner or later, and for you, she would have it be sooner." I rolled my shoulders backward as surreptitiously as I could, and sunk my awareness into the sigils tattooed on my body. There was a band around my right bicep, a stylized, abstracted chain. I silently asked it to wake.

  "I had not thought you leashed, by my mother or anyone else."

  The yath hound laughed again, and the girls winced back against me. I put my hands on their shoulders, steadying them. "We all wear leashes, princeling. You can accept it, or fight against it, but in the end, you will be put to heel. Even your chess pieces here wear leashes." Its yellow gaze flicked to me and the girls. I would rather it had kept ignoring us. "Love, or vows, or vengeance—we are all bound."

  "A pretty sentiment, but I gave up my bonds long ago."

  The massive shoulders heaved as the hound shrugged. "If we all did as you, there would be anarchy."

  Rowan
stepped closer. "You're in my way."

  "What seek you in this backwater piece of the woods?" The dog's eyes narrowed.

  "Only to walk through it." Rowan held out his empty hands. The girls' shoulders trembled with tension.

  "May we pass?" I said. Sometimes you really did just have to ask. I didn't expect it to be that easy this time, but we wouldn't know unless we tried.

  The hound lowered its great head and its nostrils spread wide as it snuffled, breathing in my scent, and the girls'. "How interesting," it growled. "Everyone thinks these children sleep in their father's house, and yet here they are with you. And what are you?" Its yellow eyes widened and it leaned forward. I tensed.

  "Just a visitor who wants to go home." The chain was ready.

  It shook its great head, slaver flecking its red mouth. "My queen has shut the gates, so you cannot leave. Don't worry. You will find my queen's hospitality most thorough."

  Right. That was enough of that. "I'm afraid not, hound." I flung my hand out and the chain spell solidified into a solid bar of energy. I pushed the hound back, blood splashing around its huge paws as it sank into the river mud. It roared in fury.

  "Go!" I told Rowan. "Get the girls up there. I'll hold it as long as I can."

  "But—" He snapped his mouth shut and vaulted up the bank, hardly needing the roots at all. He leaned down and hauled up first Igraine, then Iliesa. "Come on," he called.

  I pulled myself up one-handed, the other still stretched out toward the yath hound. It was pushing back, and its strength was considerable. It growled again, then looked right at me, opened its mouth and started to eat the spell. Fuck. I hadn't known that was possible. It burned along my caster's senses, an inimical force consuming my magic. I whimpered and froze, clinging to the tangle of roots, as I tried to maintain the spell. Rowan leaned down and grabbed my hand, then pulled me up as easily as he had the girls.

  "Where?"

  Of course. I had the disc. "The big oak," I ground out past the feel of my magic dying as it was eaten. Rowan took the disc out of my hand and slid through the underbrush to the oak. He slammed the disc into the split in the tree, and I felt the door open, silvery threads of magic visible even to the naked eye. The hound roared again.