Then I wrote the word. Gatekeeper.
A breeze kicked up from nowhere, sweeping through the tunnels. Earthen layers peeled back from the cave wall, revealing a hollow opening. A spark of sunlight beckoned at the end of a long path winding between trees.
“Is this the way out?” I breathed.
“Yes,” Thomas murmured. “I recognise this place. But to traverse it, we must take a steed with us. If he’s still here, that is.”
He gave a whistle, and a giant white horse cantered into view. A tremendous beast with a horn the length of my arm galloped down the path, halting in front of Thomas.
Not a horse. A unicorn.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
22
A unicorn. Had the stories ever mentioned Thomas riding on a unicorn? I supposed it was close enough to a horse for humans without the Sight to confuse the two of them. The beast lowered its head, and I tentatively raised a hand to stroke its ivory-white horn. The unicorn snorted, gave its head a shake. It wanted me to climb onto its back.
Here goes nothing. Taking a deep breath, I swung my leg over the unicorn’s neck and settled behind its shoulders.
“Aren’t you coming?” I said to Thomas. “I could use someone to steer me in the right direction.”
He hesitated, then swung up to join me. It took one light tap of my foot for the unicorn to spring into motion, just as several guards appeared behind us. “Stop right there!”
“Gangway!” I yelled, urging the beast into a gallop.
The guards leapt aside, avoiding the unicorn’s spear-sharp horn, and we rode on through the tunnel towards the light. I didn’t know what I expected to find on the other side. The Vale, perhaps. Instead, I found a blank stretch of road, flanked with briars and thorny plants. The gleam of water nearby indicated a river, but when I drew closer, I saw the waters were crimson.
“That’s the Blood River,” Thomas said. “They say every Sidhe who dies in battle is washed away in its flow. The Huntsman takes their souls and the River takes their blood. The River travels through both Courts, and if you follow this path, you will end up in the part of Summer beyond reach of the Erlking’s lands.”
“Hold up.” I twisted to face him. “You mean we’re back in Faerie.”
Which meant Etaina and the Seelie Queen were doing battle right now, and I was stuck on a unicorn in the rear end of nowhere.
“We are in the forgotten part of the faerie realm.” He urged the unicorn forwards, and I held on tight as our steed broke into a gallop. What was the deal with the keys, then? They hadn’t got us out, but surely the Erlking wouldn’t have left that riddle for me if he hadn’t intended me to do something with it. Something that involved stopping Etaina.
“Someone’s up ahead!” Thomas warned. “Stop!”
A woman carrying a sword walked onto the path, clad in jeans and a leather jacket. Her features were starkly human, her dark hair tied back and her sword glimmering with blue light.
The woman turned, eyes widening, and the unicorn skidded to a halt, its horn inches from impaling her.
“Hey!” said the woman. “Watch where you’re putting that horn… is that a unicorn?”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “I know you from somewhere. I’m Hazel Lynn, Summer Gatekeeper.”
“I’m Ivy Lane,” she said. “I’m also your distant relation and a friend of your sister’s.”
Of course. Ivy was employed by Faerie, though I’d ever seen her in the Court during my tenure as Gatekeeper. The distant relation part had slipped my mind, though. “How distant are we talking about?”
“Very.” Thomas’s voice was quiet. “Etaina took great delight in telling me that after my twin daughters were taken by Summer and Winter, my wife left the Lynn house behind and set up a base somewhere else. She remarried, and her descendants scattered. As the bloodline became diluted, the effects of the Lynn curse faded.”
“Yeah, I had zero magic until I found this.” Ivy waved her sword, which gleamed up to its hilt. A talisman. Another human with a talisman. Ivy had tricked a Sidhe into giving her their magic, the rumours said. Perhaps it ran in the family.
“Meet Thomas Lynn,” I said to her. “The originator of the Lynn curse. Also, I don’t know if you heard, but there’s a war on in Summer.”
“That’s where I was going,” said Ivy. “Faerie thought it was funny to get me lost instead. Do you know the way out?”
“No, but I’m trying to find it.” I patted the unicorn’s back. “You’ll have to follow us on foot, and I can’t promise I know where I’m going.”
But if Ivy was here, surely the Courts couldn’t be too far off.
Ivy fell into step with us on the path. “Can you explain who I’m supposed to be fighting? I know the Seelie Queen murdered the Erlking and tried to take over Summer. I also heard you had his talisman, but I don’t see it.”
“Long story short, the Courts are in a deadlock between two angry queens, and one of them stole my talisman,” I said. “She also happens to be able to glamour anyone into obedience. I don’t know if she wants to take over Summer, but the Seelie Queen does.”
“How do I always manage to miss these things?” said Ivy. “I’ve been dealing with an argument between the Unseelie Queen and the borderlands for the last few weeks, and I assumed Summer would sort itself out. How did you end up with a talisman, anyway? No offence, but they don’t tend to go for humans.”
“No clue,” I said. “But both queens want to stick it to the Erlking. They’re also sisters.”
“Family disputes,” said Ivy, with an eye-roll. “With the Sidhe, it’s always about blood, or family, or both.”
Yeah. And I’m not linked to any of them by blood, just by an accident that enslaved my whole family.
“Or riddles,” I added. “The Erlking left one for me in the realm of the Aes Sidhe. I’m supposed to look for a key. What it has to do with winning the war, though, I wouldn’t know.”
“I don’t know anything about keys,” said Ivy. “But I did get the impression someone wanted me to find you. Or Faerie itself did.”
My heart lurched. “You joke, but my family is literally bound to the heart of Faerie itself. When the Aes Sidhe split from Summer and Winter, they left the curse behind in the realm itself. Which means breaking the curse is pretty much impossible without destroying Faerie… and as luck would have it, the talisman might do exactly that.”
Ivy’s eyes widened. “Seriously? You know, I always thought this place was conscious, but I figured I was just imagining things.”
Damn. She’s right. The number of times I’d walked through Faerie and been convinced some invisible force was moving the paths around, and had the sense that even the Sidhe didn’t truly know the depths of it.
“The gods created it,” I murmured. “They must have. I mean, they were the Sidhe’s predecessors, so it’s not that far out of reach.”
But does that mean one of them lies at the heart of Faerie? That might explain how the Gatekeeper’s magic could stand up to the gods, but that didn’t change the fact that the Erlking’s destructive power was one mistake away from devouring the whole realm.
A rustling noise came from the trees and my body tensed. Then a dark cloud of ravens and crows swooped overhead, forcing me to flatten myself against the unicorn’s back to avoid them.
“What’s got the Morrigan all fired up?” Ivy said.
“Oh, good, she did decide to help out.” I watched the crows and ravens fly towards the sounds of fighting, the clash of blades, shouts and snarls and other inhuman noises. “The Seelie Queen recruited wraiths from all over the Vale to join her team. Guess the Morrigan finally decided she was encroaching on her territory.”
The unicorn made a sharp turn, and at once, I recognised our surroundings. The path of the dead wove into the distance, utterly flat as though hammered by the impact of countless footsteps. It extended in either direction in a straight line, but instead of following the path, the unicor
n veered away.
“There’s the gate,” said Thomas, indicating an expanse of ice-covered hawthorn points looming in front of us.
“That’s not our gate.” I swore. “We’re still in Winter.”
“I know that gate,” Thomas insisted. “I entered Faerie this way.”
“You haven’t been here for a while,” I said. “There are two gates. One in Summer, one in Winter.”
“The gate must have split when you were cursed,” he said. “To allow both sides of the family to enter Faerie.”
There was one gate. One gate, now two. Two keys. Like the riddle. I looked down at the key in my hand, then at the gate. What did the Erlking want me to do with this?
Ivy cleared her throat. “I’m going to join the battle.”
“Go ahead.” I hopped off the unicorn’s back and walked to the gate, key in hand. “I’ll catch you up.”
“Sure.” Ivy hefted her sword. “Good luck.”
A nagging voice in the back of my head told me the battle wouldn’t wait for me, but the symbol on the Winter gate gleamed arrestingly. To make two become one, the riddle had said. Our curse was tied to the heart of Faerie, and if two became one again, maybe we’d be able to harness that strength to defeat the two queens.
Perhaps it took a god to defeat a god, after all.
The key fit snugly into the lock and turned, once. The clicking sound it made brought a chill to my skin. It worked.
Which meant there was an identical key for our gate, somewhere on the surface. But where in Faerie was the equivalent of the realm of the Aes Sidhe? Summer, perhaps. The Erlking himself had hidden the keys, so the second one must be hidden on his own territory. Somewhere only the Gatekeeper could find it.
“Swift,” I said, aloud. “Swift, where are you?”
No reply came. The sprite must be hiding from the battle. Think, Hazel. The first key had been hidden inside a pool…
The gate flew open, revealing an expanse of pristine snow, and Holly recoiled from the unicorn’s horn. “What the hell?”
“Sorry, but we have to use your gate.” I hopped onto the unicorn’s back again. “C’mon. We’re going to Summer’s gate.”
The unicorn had other ideas. It bounded through the gate and across the Winter Gatekeeper’s lawn, kicking up snow-covered grass as it careened towards the woods.
“Hey!” Holly shouted. “What the hell are you doing to my garden? Is that a unicorn?”
“I don’t think he’s a fan of snow,” I said over my shoulder. “Sorry, I can’t stop—”
I held on tighter, and the unicorn snorted in a combination of discomfort and terror. Thomas yelled in alarm as the unicorn flew full-tilt at the forest—
The trees vanished, moving aside to reveal the Summer Lynn house behind Holly’s. The gate was still there, but the hedges of the Inner Garden had peeled back, exposing the pool of shimmering water, bright as starlight.
The polar opposite of that stagnant pool inside the realm of the Aes Sidhe.
“I think,” I said, “I just found the source of our binding to Faerie.”
Thomas exhaled softly. “It’s beautiful. I remember seeing such a pool when I first entered the realm of the Lady of Light.”
“I bet you did,” I murmured. “That’s how she got you.”
The Inner Garden was our biggest secret. I’d always thought it odd that the Sidhe would give us access to something so powerful, as the waters could heal any injury no matter how serious. They’d even managed to counter the magic of my talisman, for a time. Yet I’d never seen such a place elsewhere in Faerie.
Its magic came from the gods. Of course it did. It’s the lifeblood of one of the Ancients.
I rode on towards the pool. I didn’t really have a plan—the unicorn was still whinnying and kicking bits of snow off its hooves—but if one pool contained one key, the other must be inside this one.
And then what? Breaking the curse wouldn’t save Faerie from the warring queens, and it wouldn’t protect humanity from their wrath. I couldn’t even sense the talisman’s shadowy power at my fingertips any longer. But I’d come too far to go back. I had to see this through.
I jumped off the unicorn’s back, my feet sinking into soft grass. As I reached for the water’s surface, sharp cold bit into my hand, causing me to recoil. Shimmering with silver light the same colour as the mark on my forehead, the waters rose into the air to form a barrier before me.
“Who is this?” boomed a voice. “Someone called on my magic. I felt it.”
Holly swore from behind me. “What the hell did you do?”
“It’s not me!” I said. “This is our family’s curse… the source of it all.”
Holly’s garden didn’t contain an equivalent to our Inner Garden pool. I’d never really thought about it before, but with the forest gone and the world stripped bare, it couldn’t be more obvious that the Inner Garden was ours alone. Perhaps because the Erlking was the one who’d transferred the curse to Summer and Winter in the first place, and he always had a bias for his own Court.
“What the bloody hell are you talking about?” said Holly. “Why were you on the other side of my gate?”
“I will explain, my lady.” Thomas moved back to speak to her, while I faced the shimmering barrier of water.
“You are the one who carries the Devourer’s power in your blood. I will not allow you to lay a hand on me, Gatekeeper. I felt part of me die, deep underground. Were you responsible?”
“No,” I said. “That was Etaina. You… you were in the other pool, too?”
The gods might be dead, but if pieces their consciousness lived on inside any sources of their magic, it stood to reason the pool would have its own innate consciousness, too.
“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Holly cut through Thomas’s attempted explanation. “What does this have to do with our family’s curse?”
“The curse bound us to Faerie, not to a person,” I explained. “But the gods created Faerie, and this pool—it’s the lifeblood of one of the Ancients. I think.”
The shimmering barrier darkened. “I was once free. I know nothing of how I came to be in this state, but many have held fragments of my power in their grip. I sense them, while I remain trapped here.”
A shiver travelled through my skin. “You aren’t the only one. We’re trapped, too.”
I was starting to guess what had happened. The Sidhe had slaughtered the Ancient and taken its blood for their own use, as they had with so many others. When the Erlking had cut off the realm of the Aes Sidhe, he’d seen to it that the Gatekeeper’s curse would transfer to the Court, and he’d given us access to the pool to ensure our survival.
But before he’d done so, he’d left instructions to the Gatekeeper behind so they would be able to find the keys he’d hidden. In the event of his death and the talisman’s loss, our only hope would be to find the two keys and unlock the gates, awakening the gods’ magic in the process.
“You, trapped? You walk free, while I do not.”
“I can help you,” I told the shimmering barrier. “But I need your help. If one of the two queens who are currently fighting over that talisman wins, you and Faerie will both be destroyed.”
“Why should I aid you, Gatekeeper? You act on the word of a king who would see my people buried in the earth.”
“The Erlking is the only one of the Sidhe who regretted what happened to the Ancients,” I said. “He gave his life to keep this realm safe from the Devourer’s power. I don’t agree with what he and the others did, but if you help me win this, I can find a way to set you free.”
“I will make no more bargains with you.”
“It’s not a bargain, it’s a promise.” I took in a breath. “The Sidhe hurt me and my family, too. I won’t forget that, and I won’t let them punish either of us again.”
The Sidhe had caused this. Too long had they made humans into scapegoats for their crimes, forced us to take the fall for their mistakes, tortured t
heir gods into supporting their quest for glory. Not anymore.
“Please,” I went on. “Just let me take the key. I won’t harm you. And I won’t use the Devourer’s magic against you.”
The waters pulled back, revealing the key lying on the bank. I knelt to pick it up, feeling its cool, slight weight. The world seemed to hold its breath as I walked to the gate, pushed the key into the lock, and turned it.
A rushing noise sounded behind me. As I turned around, the waters flew from the pool, evaporating into fine mist. The symbol on my forehead throbbed, and Holly exclaimed, clutching her forehead, too. Magic swirled in my hands, the Gatekeeper’s power yearning to escape.
The Gatekeeper wants to take our magic. “Please,” I gasped out. “Help us stop Etaina. Then I’ll let you go. I promise. I swear—”
The waters flung themselves at me, covering me from head to toe. Holly shouted in alarm, while my mouth flew wide, speaking words I barely grasped the meaning of. A heavy weight settled on my shoulders, and I knew I’d voiced my promise aloud in an unbinding spell that wouldn’t break.
Now all I had to do was honour it. No pressure.
23
The mist pursued me as I walked up to Summer’s gate, covering me in a fine layer. Weirdly, it didn’t feel wet or cold, but I didn’t know what advantages it might give me in a fight.
Behind me, Holly bombarded Thomas with questions, reacting with about as much shock as I’d expected to the notion that our ancestor was alive to see his descendants reap the benefits of the chaos he’d unleashed on our lives.
She caught me up at the gate. Her gaze flickered over the semi-transparent layer of magic cloaking me like thin mist. “So this is the Erlking’s fault? He saw to it that we were enslaved so he’d have someone to set up against Etaina after he died, knowing she’d go after his talisman again? And our power is really from this… god?”
“Yes, from the god whose magic lies at the heart of Faerie.” I rested my hands on the gate. “What’s the situation on the other side?”
The Gatekeeper's Trials: The Complete Trilogy Page 65
