Jesse blushed and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Give me your hand,” said the fae woman.
Jesse reached out and Ariana held it—and smiled like a wolf scenting her prey. “Oh yes, you are a lodestone.” She turned to look at Zee. “With her I can find him. He is that way.” She pointed toward the back of the garage.
* * *
WE LOADED INTO ADAM’S TRUCK BECAUSE ZEE’S TRUCK wouldn’t hold us all—and Zee drove. Ariana sat in the front and Samuel sat behind Zee, as far as he could get from her in the big truck.
The sound of the big engine brought a smile to Zee’s face; he appreciates modern technology more than I do.
“Adam has good taste,” was all he said.
Looking for Gabriel was frustrating because it took us a while to figure out that we had to cross the river, and the roads didn’t always lead where she was pointing. Adam had a map in his jockey box, and Samuel used it to figure out how to work our way around to the most likely destinations.
We ended up in an empty, flat meadow up a winding dirt road (not marked on Adam’s map) that might have been an hour’s drive from the Tri-Cities if we’d known where we were going in the first place. There was a fence around the field we’d all had to climb over. Maybe ten years ago it might have held in livestock, but the barbwire drooped and T posts were tipped over. Near where we’d parked the car were the remnants of someone’s old cabin.
Ariana, looking out of place in her cardigan and stretch-knit pants, stopped in the middle of the field between a thatch of bunchgrass and a couple of sagebrush.
“Here,” she said, sounding worried.
“Here?” Jesse said incredulously.
I took advantage of our halt to start picking cheatgrass out of my socks. If I’d realized we’d be running around out there, I’d have worn boots—and a thicker jacket.
“The fairy queen has set up her Elphame,” Zee observed soberly.
“That’s bad?” I asked.
“Very bad,” he said. “It means she is stronger than I thought—and probably she has more fae at her command than we suspected if she still has the ability to build a home.”
“How could she have done that here?” asked Ariana. “She must be able to tap into Underhill to create her own land. The gates to the Secret Place have been lost to us for centuries—and Underhill never was in this land.”
I looked at Zee. I couldn’t help it because I’d been to Underhill—and then sworn to silence.
“Underhill was wherever it chose to be,” Zee said. “The reservation is no more than ten miles away as the crow flies. Most of the fae who live there aren’t the powerful among the fae—but there are a lot of us, more than appear on the government’s rolls. There is power in that kind of concentration.” He was careful not to say that the reservation had reopened a path or two to Underhill.
Ariana held her hand out, palm down, and closed her eyes briefly. “You’re right, Zee. There is power here that tastes of the Old Place. I had wondered why she bothered to keep Phin alive when killing him would have been the most logical path for her to take. She outsmarted herself when she took him to Elphame.”
“Fairy queens follow rules,” agreed Zee. “Mortals who are taken to the Elphame cannot be killed or permanently harmed—it’s part of the magic of building a place apart.”
Ariana gave him a little smile. “My Phin must be too human for her to kill. I wonder if she knew that when she took him to her lair? If he is human, she cannot, of her own volition, release him for a year and a day.”
“Does that mean she can’t kill Gabriel?” Jesse rubbed her arms to keep warm. “And that we can’t get him for a year and a day either?”
“She can’t kill Gabriel either.” It was Samuel who answered. “That doesn’t mean she won’t hurt or enthrall them. Fairy prisoners can be rescued by stealth, by battle, or by bargaining.”
“Bargaining? Like in the song ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ but with a fairy?” I asked. It seemed to me that I’d heard a similar tale with fairies in it.
“Right,” Samuel agreed. “It can be a contest—usually musical, because fairy queens tend to be musically talented. But there are stories of footraces or swimming contests. My father has a wonderful old song about a young man who challenged a fairy to an eating contest and won.”
“How do we get in?” asked Jesse.
“The only way I know of getting into Elphame is by following the queen in,” Ariana said.
“I might be able to open a way,” said Zee. “I think I can manage to keep her from knowing what I’ve done. But I’ll have to stay here and hold the door open—and I won’t be able to keep it open forever. An hour at most and you have to be out. If the door closes . . . As it does in Underhill, time passes differently in Elphame. If the door closes, even if you manage to escape, there is no telling how much time will have passed when you get out.”
“Okay,” said Jesse.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Not you, Jess. No.”
“I’ll be the safest person there,” she told me. “I’m strictly a mortal human—they can’t kill me.”
“They can make you want to be dead,” said Samuel.
“You need me to find Gabriel.” Jesse set her chin. “I’m coming.”
I looked at Ariana, who nodded. “The Elphame is entirely under the control of its maker. If we want to find your young man quickly and get him out, we’ll need her to do it.”
“Then let me call Adam and get the wolves.” I should have stopped at Sylvia’s to pick up something that Ariana could have found Gabriel with that wasn’t living. I didn’t want to cause Adam’s pack any more trouble than I already had—but I wanted even more to get Gabriel and Phin out of the fairy’s hold and still keep Jesse safe.
Ariana sucked in a quick breath. “I am sorry,” she said. “Samuel is . . . I could not do it with strange werewolves. If it were just fear, I would do it. But the panic attacks can be dangerous to anyone around me.” She looked at Zee. “Could they find them without me, do you think?”
“No,” said Zee. “If I have to stay out here, then they will need you to keep them from being lost. Moreover, I think that the wolves might be a mistake. Samuel is old enough and powerful in his own right—I think he could resist the will of one such as a fairy queen. But all of the wolves . . . The chances are too great that she would turn our own against us. If she turns you or Jesse, Ariana and Sam can still get you out. If you go in with the pack, even one wolf who turns would mean death.”
“It’s all right, Mercy,” said Jesse. “I’m not helpless, and I . . . Would you be able to wait out here if it were Dad in there?”
“No.”
“Are you ready?” asked Zee.
“All right,” I said, painfully aware that Adam would not be happy with me, but Jesse was right. She was probably the safest among us. “Let’s get them out of here.”
“Good,” said Zee—and he dropped his glamour without fanfare or drama.
One moment he was the tallish skinny old man with a little rounded belly and age spots on his neck and hands, and the next he was a tall, sleek warrior with skin dark as wet bark. Sunlight tinted his hair gold. It hung in a thick braid that flowed over one shoulder and hung lower than his belt. The last time I’d seen him, his pointed ears had been pierced many times, and he had worn bone earrings in the piercings. There were no decorations at all.
His was a body that didn’t belong in the jeans and plaid flannel shirt he still wore. The clothing fit him as well in his current shape as they had in the one I was used to. I supposed that made sense because it was the Zee I knew who was the illusion and this man, and his clothes, that were real.
Zee’s true face was uncanny—beautiful, proud, and cruel. I remembered the stories I’d found about the Dark Smith of Drontheim. Zee had never been the kind of fairy who cleaned houses or rescued lost children. He’d been one to avoid if you could and to treat very, very courteously if you couldn’t. He’d mello
wed a little with age and didn’t disembowel anyone who displeased him anymore. Not that I’d seen anyway.
“Wow,” said Jesse. “You are beautiful. Scary. But beautiful.”
He looked at her a moment, then said, “I have heard Gabriel say the same of you, Jesse Adamstochter. It was meant as a compliment, I believe.” He turned to Ariana. “You’ll have to leave the glamour behind. The only glamour that works in Elphame is the queen’s, and if you wait until the Elphame rips it from you, it will alert those inside that they have an intruder.”
She clenched her fists and glanced at Samuel and away.
“I’ve seen your scars,” he said. “I am a doctor and a werewolf. I saw those wounds when they were new and raw—scars do not bother me. They are the laurels of the survivor.”
Like Zee, she didn’t bother with theatrics. Without glamour, her skin was a warmer color than Zee’s and several shades lighter. It was beautiful against silver-lavender hair that was no more than a finger-length long anywhere and floated out from her scalp more like plumage than hair—a lot like Jesse’s current hairstyle. Ariana’s clothes altered when her glamour dropped as well, into a simple knee-length dress of an off-white color with a handkerchief hem.
She wasn’t conventionally beautiful—her face was too inhuman for that, with eyes that were too big and a nose too small for humanity. Her scars weren’t as bad as they’d appeared when I’d seen them before. They looked older and less angry . . . but there were a lot of them.
“We are ready,” Samuel said, looking at Ariana with a hunger that had nothing to do with his stomach.
Zee reached behind his head and drew his dagger, dark-bladed and elegant in its deadly simplicity, from beneath the collar of his shirt. Either it was magic or a sheath, I couldn’t tell, and with Zee it could be either one. He used it to make a single clean cut on his forearm. For a moment, nothing happened, and then blood, dark and red, welled up. He knelt and let the blood drip into the dirt.
“Mother,” he said. “Hear me, your child.”
He put the hand of his uninjured arm into the soil and mixed his blood into the powdery earth. In German he whispered, “Erde, geliebte Mutter, dein Kind ruft. Schmecke mein Blut. Erkenne deine Schöpfung, gewähre Einlass.”
Magic made my feet tingle and my nose itch—but nothing else happened. Zee stood up and counted off four paces before he sliced his other forearm.
Kneeling, he bowed his head, and this time there was power in his voice. “Erde mein, lass mich ein.”
Blood slid over his skin and down onto the backs of his hands, which were flat on the ground. “Gibst mir Mut!” he shouted—and rolled his hands over, wiping the blood on the ground.
“Trinkst mein Blut. Erkenne mich.” He leaned forward and put his weight on his arms. First his hands, then his arms sank into the ground until they were buried past the wounds he’d given himself. He leaned down until his mouth was nearly in the dirt, and said quietly, “Öffne Dich.”
The ground under my feet vibrated, and a crack appeared between the place Zee sat and the place where he’d mixed his blood with the soil.
“Erde mein,” he said. The ground quivered with the vibrations of his voice, which sounded darker, as if he were dragging it out of a deep cavern. “Lass mich ein. Gibst mir Glut.” He put his forehead on the ground. “Trinke mein Blut. Es quillt für Dich hervor. Öffne mir ein Tor!”
There was a flash, and a large square of dirt just disappeared, leaving in its place a stone staircase that went straight down for eight steps, then began to turn upon its inner edge. I couldn’t see any farther because a thick fog rose from the depths of the hole and obscured the stairway about ten feet down.
Zee jerked his hands out of the ground. There was dirt on his arms, but no wounds and no blood. He raised one hand and held it out to Ariana, giving her a stone that glowed.
“I can hold it for about an hour,” Zee told us. “Ariana can use the stone to find the way back to me. If you see the light begin to flicker, it means I am at the end of my strength, and you need to get back here. So long as this door is open, the time in the Elphame will sync with the time outside. If this door closes, you might get out, but I don’t know when you’ll find yourselves if you do.”
* * *
SAMUEL LED THE WAY DOWN, FOLLOWED BY ARIANA. I sent Jesse ahead of me and took up the rear. The light above us grew quickly dimmer until we were traveling in virtual darkness. Jesse stumbled, and I caught her before she could fall.
“Here,” said Ariana. “Put your hand on my shoulder, Jesse.”
“I’ll put mine on yours,” I told Jesse. “Samuel, can you see anything?”
“I can now,” he said. “It’s getting lighter ahead.”
“Lighter” was a relative term, but the ten stairs we went down I could see. The stairs ended in a dirt tunnel that was lit by gems embedded in the ground that were as big around as oranges. The ceiling of the tunnel was about six inches lower than Samuel was tall, and the roof and sides were thick with tree roots.
“There aren’t any trees above us,” I said. “And even if there were, we’ve come down a long way past where I’d have thought there would be roots.”
“She has a forest lord in her court,” said Ariana, reaching to the side where strings of roots made a rough curtain for the dirt wall beyond. The roots moved toward her, caressing her fingers briefly before falling back where they had been.
“What kind of fae are you, Ariana?” asked Jesse. “Are you a forest lord, too? Or a gremlin like Zee, because you can work silver?”
“There are no others like Zee,” she told us. “He is unique. Almost all fae can work with silver to one extent or another—silver loves fae magic. But you are right: there are iron-kissed fae in my background, and steel holds no terrors for me.”
We were talking quietly, but I wasn’t too worried about being discovered. There was a feeling of . . . emptiness here that told me that there was no life other than the roots that tangled in my hair and tripped my feet.
“We—” I stopped, remembering that I wasn’t supposed to discuss anything about the fairy queen. Had I already broken my word? Did it matter when we were storming the castle?
“Jesse,” I said, deciding to play it safe, “we haven’t planned anything at all about the rescue.”
“There’s no planning when you’re running through Elphame,” said Samuel, who was walking bent over, with one hand up to ward off the roots. “It’s not that kind of place. Ariana will lead us to her grandson and Gabriel, and we’ll try to get out by coping with anything that happens along the way.”
“That sounds . . . simple,” I said.
“It could be simple,” Ariana told me. “She cannot be expecting visitors—there just aren’t very many fae who could open a back entrance into a fairy queen’s lair. Thralls will not react to us—they know nothing and are not much more than automata who follow the queen’s orders. We may be able to find Phin and Gabriel and leave with them before anyone realizes there is something wrong.”
“Should we have brought—” Ariana’s fingers touched my lips.
“Best we not talk about what that one so desires in her lair,” she told me. “I expect she might hear that. And no. It is powerful, and even if it will not do as she wants, it will still do great harm in the wrong hands.”
“All right,” I said.
Samuel raised his head. “Best we not talk anymore at all. I’m starting to pick up the scent of people now.”
I could smell them, too, once he’d pointed it out. We were coming upon more-traveled ways. The loose dirt of the floor became packed earth, and the roots thinned and were replaced with rough-cut square blocks as the dirt floor became cobbles, and the ceiling rose so Samuel could stand up straight again.
There were already other tunnels joining ours.
I caught the scent before Samuel, but I think it was only because the woman came upon us from behind, and I was walking last. It didn’t matter, though, because I only had t
ime to whirl around, and she was upon us.
She wore a torn jacket and filthy jeans and carried a large wooden cutting board in both her hands. She walked right into me and bounced off. When she tried to walk around me, I blocked her a second time.
“Take this to the kitchen,” she said, without looking up at me. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, all of her attention on the board she held. Her hair hung in ragged clumps, and there was dirt on her knuckles. Around her neck was a thin silver collar. “The kitchen, child. The kitchen. Take this to the kitchen.”
I moved out of her way, and she all but sprinted past us.
“She’s not taking care of her thralls,” said Ariana disapprovingly.
“Thrall?” asked Jesse.
“Slave,” I answered. “You know when someone is enthralled with a movie or a boyfriend—that’s from the same root word.”
“Follow her,” said Ariana. “The kitchen should be at the heart of Elphame.”
We jogged after her, passing by a young man in a police uniform, a woman in a jogging suit, and an older woman carrying a steaming teapot, all wearing silver collars, and all moving with unnatural intentness. The floor switched from cobbles to stone tiles, and the ceiling rose again until it was fifteen feet or more above our heads.
The gems that had lit the passage we had been in were lining the walls and dangling from the ceiling from something that could equally well have been fine silver wire or spiderwebs. Whatever it was, it didn’t look strong enough to hold them. Samuel’s head would hit the lower gemstones once in a while, sending them swinging.
We came into the kitchen, which could have been imported from a 1950s TV set—a very large cooking set, since there were two six-burner stoves in a room that was bigger than my now-deceased trailer. I looked around, but none of the people in the kitchen was Donna Reed or June Cleaver . . . or Gabriel Sandoval, either. The glistening white appliances were rounded in a manner my eyes found odd, and the three refrigerators had silver latching handles and Frigidaire stenciled in silver across the top. People with silver collars were preparing food and drink—and didn’t seem to notice our presence at all. The woman we’d followed here put the cutting board on the counter next to one of the sinks and began to fill the sink with water by working the hand pump that it had instead of a faucet.
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