Only one feature remained unchanged: Iolanthe still wore the same bloody smile.
They say she’s a splinter of the worst kind, Reeve had said. The absolute worst.
“What did you do to the others?” Lottie said. “It’s me you’re after, so just take me.”
Iolanthe ignored Lottie. She was watching a third Southerly soldier, who had pulled the satchel from Dorian’s writhing, gasping body. The solider sifted through the satchel’s contents.
“Here,” he said, pulling out a linen-wrapped bundle. “This, m’lady. I can taste its potency from here.”
“Careful with it.” Iolanthe’s words still came out like the bark of the Barghest. “Put it back. Carry the satchel. Follow me. You two, bring her and the boy.”
Iolanthe turned her back to Lottie and strode down the beach. The one soldier scurried after her with satchel in hand, leaving Dorian in the red-stained sand.
“Move, you,” Lottie’s soldier grunted, pushing her forward.
But Lottie’s legs felt as moveable as two bricks. She stared at Dorian’s bloodied body. He was no longer writhing. He wasn’t moving at all.
“Dorian,” she said. “Dorian, hold on!”
She knew how stupid the words were, even as she said them. Hold on for what? Who would save Dorian? Who would save any of them? Who possibly could?
“Move,” said the soldier, jabbing his mace into her back.
Lottie cried out. She placed one foot in front of the other, but not fast enough to match the soldier’s pace. She stumbled again and again.
“That’s it,” said the soldier, stopping.
For one ridiculous moment, Lottie thought he might have given up trying to make her walk and decided to just let her be. Instead, he grabbed Lottie about the waist and hauled her over his shoulder. Lottie wanted to beat against his back, but she could not. She wanted to scream again, but what good would it do? There was no one to hear her but Iolanthe ahead and a dying Dorian behind and, beyond that, the unfeeling waves crashing upon the shore.
She watched the sand pass beneath her, watched the soldier’s footprints form, then quickly shift away. And at the very edge of her sights were the buckled boots of the soldier in charge of Eliot. Lottie strained her neck just once to see that this soldier, too, had resorted to throwing Eliot over her shoulder. Weak with exhaustion, she dropped her cheek to the soldier’s back and closed her eyes, listening to the slip of boots on sand, to the jostle of metal latches and buckles on the soldier’s uniform, to the drag of the tide, and to the frantic thud-thud-thud of her own heart.
The sounds carried on for minutes piled upon minutes. The slip of boots, the jostle of metal, the drag of the tide, the thud of her heart. The noises bled together. Lottie’s feet had gone numb from cold. Strange pains and thoughts dragged across her mind.
How much farther? Where was Iolanthe taking her? Where were the others? Was Dorian still alive?
Then the jostling stopped. Lottie felt the world slip from under her, felt earth at her back. She opened her eyes to a cloudless sky above. She heard labored breaths beside her. Eliot. Lottie wanted so badly to reach out and take his hand in hers.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, even though she had begun to believe less and less, with each passing minute, that things would ever be okay again.
“Lottie!” shouted a voice, not Eliot’s. “Puck’s sake, don’t tell him anything! Don’t give him anything. We’re all right. Let him do what he wants but don’t—”
“I thought I told you to gag the wisp.”
Lottie’s joy at hearing Fife—he was alive!—turned sour at the sound of the second voice. She had not heard it in more than a month, but she recognized it instantly. It had haunted her dreams in Wisp Territory and still sat pungent on the back of her memories.
“Lottie!” yelled Fife. “Don’t—”
Fife’s warning was muffled. Lottie strained hard to see around her, but she could make out nothing save sky and sand.
“What’s the meaning of bringing her here, Iolanthe? I told you—”
“I thought—I led her this way to bring her to you—” Iolanthe took a breath. “I think she may yet know something, Your Majesty. Something the others do not. She has now been to the Wilders. She has seen—”
“Excuses!” roared the Southerly King. “I gave you one simple task. Weeks it’s been. Weeks, and still you’ve failed me. I’d do better to throw you to the Northerly Vines, same as I did Grissom.”
“Most excellent sire, if you’d only—”
“All it took was a slip of a knife, an arrow properly nocked, a sword to the heart. Now, fifty of my finest soldiers slaughtered, and you dare approach me with your own neck unharmed, dragging that abomination behind, still breathing? I told you I wanted her dead. I told you I wanted her before me in pieces.”
Lottie shook so hard that her teeth knocked against each other.
“She’s as good as dead, sire. Look at her. Wouldn’t you rather she suffer?”
Starkling’s voice, so wild before, now took a horribly soft turn. “I would rather she be a corpse, buried beneath my feet, no longer a nuisance biting my heels at every turn. She started as a gnat, Iolanthe, and you have let her turn into a snake. And you bring her to me now, of all possible times. You bring her just at the start of my war.”
“I thought you would consider it a bounty, sire. I thought you would be glad to have her underfoot once and for all. A celebratory gift, if you will, to commemorate the dawning of a new age. The age of your people.”
There was the sound of movement, slight but rough.
“My people,” said the youthful voice of the Southerly King. “Do you presume to know anything about my people?”
“Forgive me, my king. I only meant—”
The sounds, the sights, the sensations came in a flurry. Lottie found herself hoisted to her feet, held up by a vicious grip.
“Stand up, you. Stand.”
Starkling held her by the coat collar, as though Lottie were nothing more than a worm caught in his talon. She struggled to find her footing, but the sand slipped under her toes, and she kept lurching forward, unbalanced. Then came a slice at her wrists, and scalding pain. Starkling had cut her bonds, but he had cut into her skin, too. The hot blood felt strange on her frigid skin. At last, Lottie found her balance. She turned, arms raised, ready to beat against the king’s chest, to inflict whatever pain she could. Starkling didn’t give her the chance. He grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her after him. As he did, Lottie got her first good look at the Southerly King.
The damage Lottie had seen working on Starkling’s skin the last time she’d stood before him, in the throne room of the Southerly Palace, was now far more advanced. Gone was the king’s unblemished face. In its place was a bony, sallow complexion. His arms were scaled like a fish’s and covered in sludge-filled boils. His eyes were reddened and murky. His grip on her, Lottie now saw, was the grip of five fingers rotted down to nothing but bare, black bone.
“Stop it! Stop!”
Lottie’s attention snapped away from Starkling to those he was dragging her past. Fife, Adelaide, and Oliver all sat in a circle, backs to each other, wrists bound. Fife had been gagged. Two Southerly soldiers stood guard over them, maces in hand. Adelaide was watching Lottie with wet eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Lottie,” she cried. “We didn’t know it wasn’t the real Barghest. We swear, we didn’t know until it was too late.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Lottie said, and though she meant for the words to come out strong, they fell flat from her lips, papery and barely audible. She was too preoccupied with whatever Starkling had in store for her.
The king dragged her on, past the others, past Oliver’s grim, slate-green stare. Lottie wanted to say something. Goodbye, perhaps, or her own apology. But before she could form words, Starkling threw her to the ground. Lottie’s bloodied hands caught the fall, her open wounds filling with sand. Lottie shrank against the pain. Then, pushing past it, she
looked ahead.
She found herself staring at a sight unlike anything she’d seen before on Kemble Isle or in all her journeys through Limn. She was kneeling at the edge of a vast chasm. Its edges were not composed of sand, but silver—a strange shifting color that seemed almost liquid. And deep down, at the pit of the chasm, was blackness—utter blackness.
As Lottie stared, she was overcome by the sensation that the chasm was growing, yawning out even as she watched.
But that was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
Lottie blinked. She took another look. But the illusion had not vanished. The gulf really was growing. Its walls were pushing outward in both directions—one down the coast and one toward Lottie. Sand shifted under her boots and began to pour forward, disappearing into the silvery dark. Lottie scrambled backward, but her back rammed into Starkling’s knees. He stood directly over her, grinning a red, toothy smile.
“One hundred apple trees,” he said. “One hundred silver boughs. Can you imagine the time it took? The things I had to do? But now all the silver has been extracted and placed in just the right positions. A hundred silver boughs, laid end on end, to rend the world.”
“A world gorge,” Lottie whispered.
“Never before has there been one of such magnitude—a gorge that will conduct the passage not just of a single soul, but of an army.” Starkling’s smile disappeared. “And you’ve ruined the big moment. I asked Iolanthe to deliver your corpse. But they say if you want something done right . . .”
Starkling yanked Lottie to her feet. Fear rattled down her spine as the king leaned his rotting face toward her. Dark spittle flew from his lips as he spoke.
“Iolanthe believes that you and your friends have information I’d be interested in. But do you know what I think? I think dear Iolanthe’s had a moment of weakness, just as Grissom did before her. I really ought to choose my right-hand sprites with better care.”
Lottie could hear sand sifting behind her, could hear the chasm groaning from new growth. Her fear grew, but so did her anger.
“My friends never did a thing to you,” she said. “Just let them go. You don’t have any right to hurt them.”
“I haven’t the right?” The smile returned to Starkling’s face. “Oh my.”
He shoved Lottie, hard. She stumbled back, and a gust of wind warmed her bare neck. Warmed her, for it was a hot breeze, blown as though fresh off a desert plain. It was coming from the gorge, the edge of which was only a pace away from her boots. Lottie thought of the gaping blackness she’d seen below. When Starkling pushed her in, how long would it take her to fall? How long would she be aware of the end coming?
Lottie thought of Eliot, and of Dorian. She thought of ragged coughs and bloodstained sand. Her grief was suffocating her, but she couldn’t reach them. She couldn’t breathe—
“Feel that?” said Starkling, his skeletal fingers ripping into her coat. “Can you feel it? It’s the heat of Dim. The heat of my world, coming up for air. I’ll be here to witness it in all its glory. But you won’t.”
Lottie knew. This was the moment. Now came the final shove. Now came the fall.
The agonizing pain she felt for Eliot, for all her friends—the fear of what would happen to them—caught up her remaining breaths. Lottie raised her bloodied hands. Weak though they were, she wrapped them around Starkling’s arms. She closed her eyes, concentrating. She gathered all her clamoring feelings and focused on Starkling alone. Strength returned to her fingers, and she dug them into his wet, peeling skin.
Starkling picked Lottie up by the lapels of her periwinkle coat. Her feet left the ground. She was aware of someone somewhere screaming her name.
The tightening sensation began, as it always did, in the very center of her chest. It squeezed on her ribs, the pain compact, like a spring pressed under a weight of iron. Lottie fought for breath.
“No,” she choked out. “No.”
Her hands had not left Starkling’s arms. She clenched them into the oily scales. She closed her eyes. The bad spell swelled within her, then shot through her arms with more force than it ever had before. It seeped out her fingers and into Starkling’s arms.
He screamed.
It was a scream of agony, of pain beyond what even Lottie was experiencing.
Starkling released his grip on Lottie. She fell. Her back hit the ground—the blessed, sandy ground. The world gorge had not yet reached them. She was safe.
Then she looked up.
Starkling had fallen to his knees. His skin bubbled like boiling water. Scales sagged from his arms and dropped into the sand like melted wax. Lottie scrambled away in horror, out of reach of the expanding gorge. Still, she could not take her eyes off the Southerly King. His jaw had turned loose like taffy. His eyes bulged crimson in their sockets. What remained of his once blond hair now dropped to the sand in clumps.
No words came from his mouth, only the screams. And then there were no screams, only a melting face with no mouth. Then no nose. Then no eyes. All turned to dark, bubbling liquid. King Starkling had disintegrated before her eyes.
Lottie had never seen a sight so horrible, and yet she could not turn her face away.
For she had done this.
She had used her keen.
Only this time, Lottie had not healed.
She had destroyed.
All that remained of the Southerly King was a simmering puddle being fast absorbed into the sand.
Lottie scrambled to her feet. She blinked again and again, trying to understand what had just occurred. But no amount of blinking or head shaking removed the sight of the puddle at her feet. Slowly, she looked up, beyond it. Iolanthe stood nearby. Her face was painted in shock, her eyes wide with disbelief. At her side stood Southerly soldiers, lost in a similar trance. Eliot sat at their feet, looking ashen. Farther off, the three soldiers guarding Adelaide, Oliver, and Fife, looked equally stunned. Everyone was staring at Lottie. Everyone was silent. The quiet closed in on her from all sides, heavy with its sheer un-noise.
Lottie turned to Iolanthe.
“Do you see what I can do?” she called, hiding her trembling, bloody hands behind her back. “Let my friends go. Let them go now.”
At that, Iolanthe’s glazed eyes snapped into focus with purpose.
“Guards,” she said. “Release the children.”
The Southerly soldiers fumbled to undo the bonds of their prisoners. Iolanthe strode toward Lottie, arms outstretched, though not in a menacing way at all, but rather like she meant to embrace her. Lottie didn’t dare step back, for to do so would mean stepping in the stained sand that had once been King Starkling.
“What a change of events,” said Iolanthe. She stopped her approach and lowered her hands. “I went to all that trouble to get ahold of your addersfork, yet you were capable of destroying him all along. And to think, I nearly cut your head clean off, when you were capable of accomplishing the thing I most desired.”
Lottie struggled to make sense of what she was hearing. “You wanted Starkling dead?”
“Same as you and yours,” said Iolanthe. “There’s no need to threaten me, Lottie. You and I are on the same team. I was going to use the addersfork to kill Starkling. But on my own terms, you understand. In my own way.”
Lottie opened her mouth. She looked around. She understood. These sprites were no soldiers of the Southerly King. They had been loyal to Iolanthe all along. Now finished with their task of setting their prisoners free, they gathered around Iolanthe in reverent postures.
“My queen,” said one, kneeling before her. “We are at your command.” Then he cast a glance at Lottie, and the look in his eyes turned her blood cold. He looked horrified. He looked disgusted. He was horrified and disgusted by her. “Do you wish us to subdue the girl?”
Iolanthe shook her head. “That won’t be necessary. She and I are reaching an understanding, aren’t we, Lottie?” She took another step closer. “You see, Starkling had his own ideas about what to do with t
he world gorge. My plan is better. And if you and your friends are willing to go along with it, I’m sure I could make good use of your talents in my court. I could elevate you all to respectable positions. Your rainbow-eyed friend would prove an especially valuable asset.”
“But you’ve been hunting us! You tried to kill me. And you tried to kill . . . Dorian.” Lottie whipped toward the others, who were just getting to their feet. “Dorian. He’s been hurt. He could be dying.”
Fife, now free of his gag and bonds, floated forward. “Where?” he asked.
Lottie pointed down the coast. “By the water’s edge. Oh, please, Fife. Hurry.”
Fife sped away, zipping over the heads of the soldiers.
“Attacking Dorian was necessary,” said Iolanthe, watching Fife’s departure. “There was no getting around it.”
“I guess not,” said Lottie. “Just like there was no getting around killing innocent wisps. Or destroying their only silver-boughed tree. Or invading the Northerly Court. I guess there was no getting around murdering me in the Revered House of Fiske. Is that what you mean?”
Iolanthe smiled thinly. “I was under orders. Even rebels must obey orders when the circumstances demand it.”
Lottie did not voice the reply jumping on her tongue. She couldn’t say everything that came to her head right now. She had to think. Iolanthe was smart. She was now the most powerful Southerly sprite in all of Albion Isle, and she was offering Lottie and her friends protection.
Or she could still be planning to kill them.
A magnificent groaning sound interrupted Lottie’s thoughts. She turned to find that the world gorge was still growing—slower now than before, but growing just the same. Sand continued to pour down its walls, and little by little the distance between Lottie and the ravine’s edge grew shorter.
“How—how do we stop it?” she asked.
“Why would I want to stop it?” said Iolanthe, looking shocked. “Though I can promise you, if you and your friends are willing to lend me your keens, I can protect you from what’s to come.”
Lottie’s mind was ablaze with half-formed plans. She’d already written out several in her mind’s eye, then discarded them, one after the other. And then a plan stuck.
The Doorway and the Deep Page 28
