“It’s not for a few hours still, in Faerie’s time,” I said. “Besides, if we find the ghosts first, there won’t be a ceremony.”
Why am I agreeing to this? Going into the lands of the dead had not been on my bucket list, but I was out of ideas on how to prove Lord Talthain’s treachery before the Seelie Court furnished him with a crown.
“The Death Kingdom?” said Holly. “You know that’s in the Winter Court, right?”
The sprite let out an anguished howl. “She has the dead on her side, and if she gathers any more, the living will fall.”
I looked between the sprite and Holly. “She isn’t in the Death Kingdom, is she? Is that how she raised the memory-eater from death?”
The sprite shook his head. “I know nothing of those dark magics, Gatekeeper. I would not ask you to walk down the path of the dead, but if you wish to stop her… you may have no choice.”
The Path of the Dead. The place where I’d been crowned as Gatekeeper.
“Maybe…” Ilsa trailed off. “Morgan, you can come out now.”
Morgan stepped out from behind a hedge. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Pepper wanted to find a piskie to chase and found a sprite instead.”
The cu sidhe barked in agreement, running in circles around the lawn. Hummingbird flew into the air with a squawk of alarm, and Darrow let him land on his shoulder out of reach of the puppy.
“A likely story,” said Ilsa. “Let me guess, you want to tag along.”
“I raise the dead for a living, too, remember?” said Morgan. “Also, Pepper’s a tracker dog who’s trained to attack ghosts. You want me on your team.”
“Did you say he’s trained to attack ghosts?” said Holly dubiously.
“Yeah, he is,” said Ilsa. “Morgan, you’re free to come, but only if you promise not to bring your boyfriend. Just the puppy.”
“Hey!” Holly said. “I didn’t promise anything, least of all a free trip to the Death Kingdom. If the Morrigan catches me, she’ll have her crows strip my flesh from my bones.”
Ilsa looked at her. “Don’t you need me to banish a wraith for you? Let us use your gate and I will. We’ll make our own way from there.”
“I can’t let you do it alone,” she said. “You’ll need my help to get from Winter’s gate to the Death Kingdom without being caught by the Sidhe. And even then, I don’t know what you’ll face over there.”
Like the Seelie Queen. I couldn’t think of any reason for her to take an interest in the furthest region of Winter, but the Death Kingdom was one of the parts of Faerie that lay closest to the Vale, aside from the borderlands. For all we knew, she’d been travelling back and forth from there ever since she’d escaped from jail.
“We’ll risk it,” said Ilsa.
Holly sighed. “If the Unseelie catch you, you’re dead. You can use the gate, but please, try not to draw attention.”
As Ilsa and Morgan followed her, I turned to Darrow. “Still want to come along? This is your last chance to drop out.”
“The Death Kingdom,” he said. “I’ve heard nothing good about that place.”
“Leave it to my sister,” I said. “She’s Gatekeeper of Death. This is her area of expertise.”
I hope. My talisman might be enough of a deterrent to keep the dead from attacking us, and Ilsa’s, too, but if the Seelie Queen was lurking over there while she waited for her ally to be crowned, we’d have a whole other battle on our hands.
He dipped his head. “Hummingbird will watch your house. If we end up in trouble, call his name, and he’ll come to aid us.”
We left through the front gate and walked down the country lane towards the second Lynn house. The home of the Winter Gatekeeper had stark white walls the colour of ice, contrasting the ivy-covered walls of my own house visible on the other side of the fence in Holly’s back garden.
Darrow glanced over his shoulder. “Didn’t we just leave your house? How can it be over there as well?”
“We’re close enough to Faerie that the usual laws of space-time don’t apply,” I answered. “This is a liminal space, so it loops around in a circle. If we walked across that field, we’d end up right back where we started.”
“Oh, there’s the wraith.” Ilsa stepped forwards as a shadow passed over the fence in a cloud of cold energy. “Go and bother someone else.”
“Or else I’ll disintegrate you,” I added, waving the staff. Holly gave me a suspicious look, edging away from me, but Ilsa’s magic did the trick. A wave of icy energy smashed into the wraith and it disappeared, leaving us alone on the path.
Holly led the way past bare trees, their arm-like branches swaying in the bitterly cold breeze, and down the side of the whitewashed house into her back garden. Unlike ours, there was no grove, no pool of healing water, and the snow-covered lawns seemed desolate in comparison. Despite that, there was a cold beauty to the jewelled snowflakes clinging to the bushes and the sharp twigs jutting from the hedges like broken bones. Beautiful and terrifying pretty much summed up Winter. Summer hid their treachery behind their smiles. When Winter smiled, people died, generally in unpleasant ways.
Holly halted beside the Winter gate. Its hawthorn points glistened with ice rather than moss and weeds like ours, but the same swirling symbol marked the top. Gatekeeper.
Holly ran her fingertips over the edge of the gate. “It’s said that Thomas Lynn went into Faerie this way.”
“They say the same about our gate,” I said.
“They can’t both be true, can they?” said Morgan.
“This is Faerie,” said Ilsa. “So I’d say yes, they can. Are you coming with us, Holly?”
She shot Ilsa a frown. “You all owe me for this.”
“Yeah, it’s not like we’re preventing a war or anything.” Morgan peered through the gate, while the faerie dog whimpered at the cold. Holly’s dark hair and ice-white circlet blended into the bare scenery on the other side, but even glamouring my circlet didn’t take away the greenish edge to its sheen.
I still glamoured my clothes, darkening the colour and giving the illusion of armour. Darrow, meanwhile, wore a glamour that made his clothes look like the armoured outfit he’d worn to train me as Gatekeeper.
“Want me to glamour you?” I asked Ilsa.
“If we’re going to the Kingdom of Death, we’ll stick out no matter what,” she said. “Pretty sure the only living creatures there are banshees and redcaps.”
“Please try not to bleed on anything,” said Holly. “Those redcaps can take you apart with their bare hands.”
“We know,” I said. “We have dealt with Faerie ourselves, you know.”
“Not the Death Kingdom.” Her gaze lingered on Darrow. “You’re a hybrid, right? Do you have a contact in Winter?”
He shook his head. “I never knew my father.”
“Well, that’s inconvenient,” she muttered. “This way.”
The Erlking’s sprite tugged on my collar. “I cannot go with you, not if I don’t want to draw the Court’s suspicions about my absence. I should not have left them for so long.”
“Don’t put your life in danger,” I told him. “Go back to Summer… maybe find Lady Aiten or Lord Raivan. Someone who we know isn’t working with the enemy.”
Not on purpose, anyway. Damn, the situation was a total clusterfuck.
“Good luck, Gatekeeper.” The sprite flitted out of sight, and I slipped after the others through the gate.
A cold breeze drifted down the leaf-strewn path, but not as cold as Holly’s garden. I knew this part of Faerie, which consisted of a single path connecting both Summer and Winter. The borderlands lay somewhere in between, though as in all of Faerie, only the general directions stayed the same.
“Are you sure you can find the way?” I asked Ilsa.
“Maybe.” Her doubtful eyes scanned the path, which led to the Winter Court on the right-hand side. “This isn’t quite how I remember.”
Holly made an impatient noise. “Do not draw any attention, that
clear?”
She marched down the path towards Winter territory. In no time at all, the trees turned leafless and dry, their branches twisting into sinister patterns like contorted limbs, while the temperature dropped with every step.
Ilsa pulled out her talisman, letting its bright blue glow spread over the path. “Damn. I can see them, but I wouldn’t know which of them was the murder victim.”
I halted. “Wait, you can see ghosts? Here?”
“Sure,” said Morgan, his gaze flickering among the trees. “I thought you all could.”
Not me. Not Darrow or Holly, either. “We don’t all have the spirit sight.”
Darrow met my eyes. “The ghosts aren’t like wraiths, are they? They can’t harm us?”
“Regular ghosts?” I said. “They’re as harmless as you can get, assuming you can see them.”
“How do you expect the ghosts to testify if nobody can see them?” asked Darrow.
“They can use glamour to make themselves visible to anyone,” I explained. “If they know we’re looking for them, that is. Ilsa, try calling their names. Lord Walvein and Lady Horell.”
In the mortal realm, Ilsa just needed to say a dead person’s name to draw their attention, but I doubted anyone had ever tried the same in Faerie.
She repeated the names, then shook her head. “I think we’re going to have to go deeper into the Death Kingdom.”
“Great.” I walked alongside Darrow, whose evident confusion prompted me to add, “To summon a person from Death, you need their name. You also need candles and a bunch of other preparatory crap if you’re in the mortal realm and it might not work even then. Unless you’re the Gatekeeper of Death, that is.”
Holly walked ahead of our group, not speaking. I wondered if she remembered she’d once tried to take Ilsa’s talisman for herself, believing she was the rightful owner. She’d been trying to stop her mother’s wraith from escaping at the time, but we’d come damned close to a world-destroying family feud ourselves.
The path angled uphill, weaving between shadowy trees. Spiked plants flanked the path, their leaves crimson like bloodstained knives, while a chill breeze swept overhead. Every exhale fogged the air, and I buried my free hand in my pocket, the other gripping the staff. Darkness swirled around its edges, symbols shifting up and down its length.
“Someone’s tap-dancing on my grave,” Morgan muttered, and the faerie dog whined in agreement. “Who rules this place, anyway?”
“The Morrigan, a nasty shapeshifting faerie who can turn into a giant crow,” I said.
“She’s in good company.” Ilsa held up her book to show the image of a raven on the cover, which had moved to spread its wings as though it wanted to jump off the page and fly away.
“The Morrigan eats souls,” said Holly. “I don’t doubt she’ll have seen the spirits you’re looking for, but she claims to remember everyone who passes through her territory.”
“Eats souls,” said Morgan. “Not living people’s souls, right?”
“Not as long as you don’t insult her,” said Holly. “The Winter Court keeps her in check. She’s bound so she can’t leave her lair, but that doesn’t stop others from visiting her.”
“Let’s just hope they aren’t working together, then,” said Ilsa. “Her and the Seelie Queen. I wouldn’t put it past her to convince the Morrigan to take her side.”
It was just the kind of trick the Seelie Queen would pull to gain yet more allies, and it fitted with her sudden interest in gathering an army of the dead from the Vale.
Maybe we shouldn’t have come here after all.
An eerie wailing noise came from within the trees. Holly drew a sharp iron knife—clearly, Winter hadn’t forbidden her from carrying iron—and faced the bushes, from which a feminine figure with long hair trailed towards us. A banshee.
She bared her sharp canines in a smile. “Human prey walks willingly into my lair. Three humans, no, four humans. I will feast well today.”
I whipped the talisman out, sending a jet of shadows towards her. The banshee danced out of range, unleashing out a shriek that pierced my eardrums and vibrated through my whole body. Ow.
Holly raised her hand and threw her knife. It sank into the banshee’s chest, cutting off her scream. “We’d better move. Banshees can’t die. They always come back.”
“Not in the same body, though.” With the Sidhe’s immortality source gone, the only true immortals left were banshees, who were reborn into a new body after their demise, sometimes several years down the line and often with no memory of their past. It shouldn’t surprise me that the Seelie Queen would take an interest in their domain, yet I saw no signs of the her, only the dead and those who fed upon them.
The memory-eater’s realm must be closer to Death than I’d thought, though, given the odd mist seeping through the trees. That, or all of Faerie’s outer edges came with the same creepy scenery. At least gravity stayed the same, but a foul smell grew in intensity the further we walked. Crimson soaked the mud, and further off, a group of redcaps tore the wings off some small creature, bathing their pointed hats in its blood.
“I understand why you don’t get much tourism here,” Morgan said, wrangling the cu sidhe back onto the path and away from the bloodthirsty creatures. “C’mon, Pepper, you aren’t scared of ghosts. This place isn’t that scary, either.”
“Famous last words,” Ilsa muttered.
Ahead of our group, Holly crested a hill. “We’re here.”
I caught up to her at the hill’s peak. Ahead of us lay a moat, but instead of water, it was blocked with bodies piled high enough that those below were crushed into a mass of limbs. Bones jutted out at angles, and blood filled the gaps in a gory current. Inside the centre of the moat was what appeared to be a giant mound of earth and stone.
I held my breath, swallowing bile, while Morgan retched into the bushes. “What the hell is this?”
“That,” said Holly, “is the Morrigan’s lair. I hoped she’d redecorated since the last time I came here, but I guess not.”
“You came here voluntarily?” I said incredulously.
“Mostly to deliver messages between the Morrigan and the Unseelie Queen,” Holly said, her mouth twisting with distaste. “Angry ones, judging by the temper tantrums she throws. Don’t piss her off, and for god’s sake don’t feed the birds.”
“I’m more worried about something eating us,” said Morgan, wiping the back of his mouth on his sleeve. “This is fucked up even by Faerie’s standards.”
“It’s the Kingdom of Death,” said Ilsa. “What did you expect, an inflatable pink bouncy castle? Let’s get this done.”
I averted my gaze from the gory currents of water, holding my breath as we crossed the bridge over the moat to the Morrigan’s lair. When we touched down on the other side, a towering ogre lumbered into view, his mossy green skin caked with gore.
“Who are you?” he growled.
“Hazel Lynn,” I said. “Gatekeeper. Three of us are, actually. Summer, Winter and Death.”
“There is no Gatekeeper of Death,” he said, baring bloodstained teeth.
Ilsa cleared her throat and held up the Gatekeeper’s book. “I’m Gatekeeper of the humans’ Death, not Faerie’s. May we please speak to the Morrigan? It’s a matter of urgency concerning the whole of the faerie realm, including the Courts.”
The ogre’s gaze travelled across our group. Morgan hid behind Ilsa, while the faerie dog hid behind his legs. Darrow, meanwhile, stuck out even more than the two humans did, with his fine silver hair and astonishingly bright eyes. The ogre, however, stared at the staff in my hand, a growl slipping between his teeth.
“That is a creation of dark magic,” he muttered. “If you use it against my mistress, you will lose your soul.”
“No danger of that happening.” I held my breath, waiting, and he lumbered aside to allow us to enter the tent-like heap of earth and stone.
As we walked into the gloomy cave, a flock of birds flew overhead, sq
uawking loudly. Clouds of firefly-sized faeries hovered beneath the domed ceiling, alighting on a throne in the centre of the cave. A human-sized figure sat there, dressed all in black. As we drew closer, she snatched a glittering crown from the beak of one of the birds and replaced it on her head with a muttered curse.
The Morrigan looked like a crow shifter had got stuck halfway between forms. Her pointed ears and jagged face were human, but her jet-black hair and wing-patterned armour mirrored the feathered animals flitting around the room. She had wings of her own, too, large ones, pinned behind her back by the same chains that bound her body to the throne.
Darrow came to a dead stop. “That’s iron.”
I’d heard the Morrigan was one tough creature, but I hadn’t expected to see human-style iron chains wrapping around her body and locking her ankles together. When her eyes met mine, cold fear locked me to the spot. The talisman jumped to attention, shadows whirling around the hilt.
“Control that thing,” she growled. “Have you come to threaten me?”
“Nope,” I said. “We have questions. Have you seen two Sidhe from Summer who recently died pass through here?”
“I see many Sidhe,” she said. “Many others, too.”
“Lord Walvein and Lady Horell,” I went on. “They were murdered, and I need to borrow their ghosts to testify to Summer. Urgently. Like, within the next two hours.”
“Borrow?” she echoed. “I cannot return the souls I have devoured, mortals.”
“You ate them.” No shit, Hazel. Now what am I supposed to do? “Have you seen the Seelie Queen recently, then? She’s building an army of wraiths in the Vale and I wondered if she’d paid you a visit.”
“I wouldn’t know.” She adjusted her position on the throne, her chains clanking. “I am not permitted to leave my cave, by the orders of the Unseelie Queen. I have not seen the traitor of Summer. If she came to my kingdom, she did not speak with me.”
Damn. “Well, she brought the memory-eater back from death. How?”
“That one?” she said. “The souls of her kind are poison to me. Too many memories create a bitter taste. I did not devour her soul, so perhaps the Queen found a way to ensnare her.”
The Gatekeeper's Trials: The Complete Trilogy Page 58
