I was quite confused, but I understood one thing: Erris. “Take me to Erris. Please. Now. And why is it so dark in here?”
“Ifra has the light,” Violet said. She gently nudged me aside to open the door and look for him.
“We don’t have time for this!” the man screamed. Was that King Belin? “If the guards know-and Tamin’s coming back…”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You want to free Erris?”
“Yes,” Belin said. “My family… we can never be great rulers as long as we’ve taken the throne by such means.”
I didn’t care for Belin’s tone, but he was willing to help Erris, that was the important thing. “All right,” I said, just as Ifra returned, flicking his fingers to summon a flame. We hurried to Belin’s side, and now I could see a narrow passageway leading underground, and my heart was drumming so hard I could barely breathe.
Belin shimmied down and waved for me to follow.
I couldn’t summon any fire myself. I was too shaken with anticipation. Was Erris here? I couldn’t see until Ifra came down, and then…
Erris was lying on the ground, mere inches from my feet. It was absolutely my Erris, through and through, even dressed much as I had first seen him, with stockings and breeches and heeled shoes like someone in an old book. He was pale and dirty and I dropped to my knees and started to shake him.
“Erris! Wake up! How do we get him to wake up?”
“I don’t know!” Belin said. “I always heard people wake up from a death sleep eventually.”
“Eventually!” I cried. “Well, what if this isn’t eventually?”
“There are skeletons in here!” Violet shrieked, once Ifra had helped her down. “Let’s bring him out!”
I couldn’t believe I was really looking at Erris. It was as magical and terrifying as the moment when I’d freed him from being trapped at the piano. I put my hand on his chest and I could feel skin and muscle and bone there; I could feel him breathing. I knew that now, of all moments, I needed to keep it together, just a little longer, but I couldn’t even seem to care that Belin and Violet and Ifra were there. My jaw was trembling, so close to tears. I wanted to touch him, kiss him, whisper in his ear.
“I can wake him,” I said. “Please, I know I can. Just leave me alone for a moment. Please.”
“In the dark with the skeletons?” Violet said.
“Yes.”
“Hurry,” Belin ordered, as if he had any better ideas. Erris was right, these Graweldins were an irritating lot. They all climbed back out, and I blocked out the sound of them talking above me. I blocked out everything except Erris, there before me. I pressed my forehead to his, pressed my hand to his heart, and felt not the tick of clockwork, but the beating of a heart.
“Erris,” I whispered through tears, running my fingers along his soft hair, brushing away thirty years of dust. “Wake up. Please wake up. This is how fairy tales end.” I kissed his lips-dry with disuse, but alive, so alive-and I flooded him with all the warm magic I could summon.
The lips parted, with a soft crack just audible in the silence. A hand slowly lifted to touch my face.
“Nim?” he croaked, and then he coughed a cloud of dust into my face, which was not very much like a fairy tale at all, but I didn’t even flinch. “Am-am I dead?”
“Oh, no. No. It’s just dark. We’re in the palace of Telmirra-”
“In the catacombs… under the Hall of Oak and Ash?” he whispered. His hands moved to my neck and my shoulders and then back to my hair, and he clutched me close. “But I must be dreaming. How did you get here?”
“I’ll explain later. King Belin wants to speak to you.”
“Wait a moment, wait a moment.” He held me close.
And then he started to cry.
And I started to cry too.
We’d both tried so many times not to cry, and now it was okay. It was okay.
“You did it,” he said. “You saved me.”
“I had help.”
“But it was you. And you know it. You needed help; it was an impossible task, but you saved me. And my heart is beating so fast. I haven’t felt that in so long. I’m really alive.”
I touched his cheek, put my face close. “Kiss me.”
“Kiss you now? No, not yet. I haven’t cleaned my teeth in years and it’s really-Let’s just wait.”
I laughed, with a catch in it, and I kissed him anyway, although not like I’d kiss him later.
At least, once we were safe.
Above us, I heard some muffled shouting, the sudden commotion of an opening door. More shouting.
I helped Erris struggle to his feet on stiff limbs before Prince Tamin could find us.
TELMIRRA
The door burst open, and there was Tamin with fury in his eyes, and his men behind him, two of them holding a woman dressed in black, the other two holding crossbows. They had Annalie, Ifra realized, after a moment of connection. She looked so serene that the men kept jostling her as if trying to get a reaction.
“What are you doing?” Tamin hissed. “Do you want to put our entire kingdom in jeopardy?”
“I want to free Erris,” Belin said.
“But what does he know? How is he fit to be king? Are you so desperate to go against me that you’re willing to let him have the throne?”
“Tamin, we can’t do this,” Belin said. “We’re making the trees sick. Father did this to us, decades ago, and it hasn’t made us stronger. Only weaker. I agree, Erris may not be fit to rule now. But we could help him.”
“Oh, well, I see. You’re going to make a hero out of yourself now? Somehow I don’t think you intended to bring Ilsin and me along. I mean, you’ve got your betrothed! She is a Tanharrow! A rightful heir! She would have fixed it all with the old magic and you would have been the one looking to the future, so why bring Erris into it at all? I just don’t understand. I don’t think you’re really doing this for any noble purpose; you’re doing it to spite me.”
“Maybe I am,” Belin said. “In part.” He glanced at Ifra. “But the jinn… he asked me what sort of king I wanted to be. He told me I could be great ruler. And I thought then, that I would like to be that sort of ruler. But I can’t. None of us can. Because of this.”
As Belin spoke, Erris Tanharrow himself appeared, crawling rather shakily out of the catacombs. He looked like someone recovering from a bad bout of influenza, all pale and wasted, but he was up and alive, and even Belin looked a little startled.
Ifra seemed to sense the danger before he saw it; he looked at Tamin and saw the shock and anger in his eyes, saw his fingers gesture an order, saw the crossbow. He dived to cover Erris, taking the bolt in his side, gasping with pain, unable to cry out.
“Ifra!” Violet screamed.
But it took more than that to kill a jinn. Jinn couldn’t even take their own lives with ease-not that Ifra had tried. But he knew poison, knives to the gut, hanging ropes, and even fire were all useless. The curse of a jinn was not death, but to live at almost any cost.
“Ifra, kill Tamin, now!” Belin shouted in his ear.
Yes… that was the curse. Living at any cost, a life that was not his own. The wish roared through him, drowning his sense, overwhelming right and wrong and everything but a sudden surge of energy that made him spring to his feet and sweep his arm toward Tamin. Another crossbow struck Ifra and he hardly noticed. The Green Hoods pushed through the doors; he saw Keyelle’s familiar face, but it didn’t matter. Tamin’s body flew into the air, slammed against a tree with force, and Ifra felt the crack of his bones and the crush of organs. He had had to break Erris, and now he had to kill Tamin. There was no choice.
Tamin’s body slumped to the ground. Most lives were so fragile.
Ifra dropped to his knees, buried his face, and wept soundlessly. He’d never killed before. He’d done everything to get to know Belin, talk to him, convince him to choose a noble path. He didn’t like Tamin, of course, but what did that matter? Now he’d never wipe t
he sight from his eyes, never shake the feeling from his limbs of that power overcoming him. Why did he have so much power, even now, even without three wishes? It wasn’t fair. He didn’t want it.
The commotion in the room died down quickly. With Tamin gone, and the Green Hoods there, Tamin’s men didn’t fight back.
Violet’s hands, small and cool, were touching Ifra’s shoulder, his head, then gently probing wounds he barely felt. “Ifra. Ifra.”
Violet couldn’t console him either.
“Ifra, it had to be done,” Belin said.
Violet sprung to her feet. Ifra slowly stood behind her. “It had to be done?” she cried. “What do you mean, ‘it had to be done’? Then why didn’t you do it? You’re a coward, an awful coward, to ask somebody else to kill your brother!”
“I couldn’t do it like Ifra could.”
“But you’re the one who wanted it!” Violet picked up a fallen branch shed by one of the trees and struck Belin with it. “You should have seen Ifra after what you made him do to Uncle Erris. It made him sick. He took care of me and was pretty much the kindest person I’ve ever met, and you wouldn’t even let him speak. You made him do an awful thing he’ll have to live with for the rest of his life.”
Belin’s brow was bleeding, his eye rapidly swelling. “I know… it seems harsh, but Tamin… just tried to kill Erris. He’s ruthless like Father. If I had put him in jail, I could never have rested. None of you grew up with him, none of you really knew him like I did. But I couldn’t wave a hand and kill him. It was my last wish. Ifra-I’m sorry.”
Ifra would not forgive Belin that. No. He didn’t even let Ifra speak, and now Ifra knew why. Belin couldn’t bear to hear Ifra beg or plead when he made that wish, maybe he didn’t even want to hear Ifra cry afterward. It was easier that way. Easier to pretend Ifra wasn’t mortal.
But Ifra himself had wished, for a moment, that Belin would ask him to kill Tamin. Just as jinns twisted the wishes of their masters, Ifra felt Belin had somehow twisted his own unspoken wish. Was it somehow his fault?
And then: “I wish to set you free now,” Belin said.
Ifra had dreamed of this moment. He would fall to his knees in gratitude. He would cry with joy.
But now, all he could say was, “I’m glad you gave me that.”
Then he took Violet’s hand.
He turned to Erris. “I will serve you, Erris Tanharrow, as a free man.”
Chapter 28
Erris looked so pale and overwhelmed that I feared he might collapse. He probably needed food, for one thing. “Well,” he told Ifra, “why don’t you have a good rest first, before you go pledging yourself anywhere.”
“You’re going to need loyal and powerful men,” Ifra said.
“Yes…”
“You will have all the Green Hoods,” Keyelle said. “We’ve been waiting for you for a long, long time.”
“I will try to be worthy of it.” Erris glanced, uncomfortably, at the fallen form of Tamin.
“I know you probably don’t care for my support, after all this,” Belin said. “But you have it nevertheless.”
“No, Belin… you set me free,” Erris said gravely. “I know these weren’t easy decisions. I’ll need your support.”
“I will tell you, tonight I’ve gathered nearly every fairy noble in the land, more of whom would have you as king than me. They’re waiting for the ball to begin, and if I introduce you, I assure you the palace will erupt with joy. We’ll worry about the dissenters later.”
“Yes,” Erris said. “Dissenters.”
“There will always be dissenters,” Annalie said. “Don’t worry. After all, you know Karstor will be on your side, and that should help a great deal of the tension.”
Erris licked his dry lips. “Would all of you mind… stepping out for just a moment?”
“Of course, Your Highness,” Keyelle said. She was beaming. In fact, all the Green Hoods were beaming. Tamin’s men gathered his body, and all of them left the room with a respectful silence and speed, already treating Erris like a king, even leaving two torches in holders by the door so we had light.
He turned to me, with countless emotions playing across his face. He held his palms open to me, and I placed my hands in his.
“Look at you,” he said with a slight smile. “Even more rough and tumble than the last time I saw you.”
“Well, I was kidnapped while looking for you, and I had to eat dried mushroom-based cuisine for two days, which was just awful, if I’m being honest.”
“Oh, dear. I’m concerned about you assimilating around here.”
“Does even the queen have to eat dried mushrooms?”
“Well, the king hasn’t eaten in thirty years and is pretty unsympathetic.”
“I bet there is something else the king hasn’t done in thirty years, so he should be indulgent of the queen.”
“Oh?” Erris’s smile looked a tad more genuine.
I gave his lips a peck. “I mean that, you rogue.”
“Of course you did. I knew that. I’m a perfect gentleman, you know.”
Erris pulled my hands against his heart, looking serious again. “Nimira… I’m scared. All these people have been waiting for me for thirty years, and I really don’t know how to be a king. They may be happy at first, but when the celebrations are over, they’ll realize how hopeless I am.”
“I know it’s scary, but you won’t be alone,” I said. “Belin may be awful when he isn’t rescuing you, but he can also tell you things, and you have Ifra, and the Green Hoods, and Karstor, and… you have me. I know I’m just a dancing girl, but-”
“No, no,” he said. “You are a sorceress, Nim. But are you sure you really want to step into this mess with me?”
“I’ve got my boots on,” I said, sliding my arms around his neck and pulling his living body a little closer. “Let’s go.”
Jaclyn Dolamore
***
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Magic Under Stone Page 24
