The Crown of Bones (The Fae War Chronicles Book 2)

by Jocelyn Fox

  “Look. I…” I was about to say “I promise,” but I choked on the words. “I’ll be more careful, all right?”

  He watched me silently, still waiting.

  “I’m not going to promise anything,” I growled at him finally. “I just won’t. So you can stop standing there looking at me expectantly.”

  He raised one eyebrow and smiled slightly. “Still so stubborn.”

  I crossed my arms. “Still the same mortal you brought through the Gate.”

  He shook his head. “No. You’re not the same, but you’re still stubborn.”

  “Can we please not get into a discussion about how I’m mortal but not, the same but not, and all that philosophical crap?” I lost my patience. I was exhausted, still wet from the river, my newly bandaged thigh beginning to ache persistently. I felt my glare break into fragments as my expression softened from anger to frustration to tiredness. “Please. I just want to…find a way out of this damn gorge. And find Vell. And Merrick. And Beryk. And Kav…” I choked on Kavoryk’s name, not remembering in time, and put my hand over my eyes tiredly as tears threatened. Pull it together, I told myself sternly. There would be plenty of time to fall apart after we had gotten out of this gorge and found the rest of our band and pressed on toward Brightvale. I felt a hand on my arm.

  “Come on, then,” he said almost gently, the hard expression on his face softening around the edges. “We’ve all had a long day.”

  I hiccupped a laugh, swiping at my eyes fiercely. “That’s an understatement.”

  Finnead smiled. “I suppose so, and a rather large one at that.”

  We turned and started walking again. “It’s felt like three or four days since we woke this morning,” I said as our boots crunched over the rocks. As hard as I tried, I was still limping as we navigated the river-bank, but Finnead and Luca said nothing. The sound of the river rushing beside us filled the silence. “What do you think will happen to the sirens, now that they’ve lost their bargaining chip?”

  Finnead shook his head. “We don’t know that what you have is even truly the Crown of Bones.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You know when I spaced out over in the grotto and then fell into the water? That was from a vision that knocked me on my butt pretty hard.”

  “Your dialect is amusing,” remarked Luca, mostly to himself. “Knocked you on your butt,” he repeated speculatively.

  I gave an unladylike snort and then turned it into a cough. “Um. Anyway. The vision took ahold of me and I saw…I saw the blessing, or benediction, or something, of Mab and Titania.”

  Finnead stopped, his hand gripping the Brighbranr so hard that his knuckles showed through his pale skin. “You saw the Making of the Queens?”

  “Making like with a capital ‘M?’ Yeah, that sounds about right,” I replied as Luca and I kept walking. After a moment Finnead caught up to us with long strides. “Do you believe me now?”

  “It is…difficult,” Finnead admitted after a moment, “to believe that not only have I seen the binding of the Iron Sword to a new Bearer, but now the Crown of Bones has surfaced.”

  “You guys seem to have a hard time holding on to really important, powerful weapons,” I remarked. Finnead gave me a sideways look. “Oh, come on. It’s a pattern, you have to admit.” I grinned as he rolled his eyes. “Look at you, an Unseelie Knight rolling his eyes at the Bearer of the Iron Sword. Not very gentlemanly, I don’t think.”

  Luca chuckled and Finnead smiled. I was glad that they played along with my humor. At this point, it was either laugh or break down sobbing, and I didn’t particularly want to become an emotional puddle next to the Darinwel. Fat lot of good that would do anyone.

  “Anyway,” I continued. “You didn’t answer my question. What do you think will happen to the sirens?”

  Finnead shrugged. “There’s a chance that they could continue on, and avoid the hold of the Shadow.”

  “They thought that joining Malravenar would be better than fighting him?”

  “You have not seen the Shadow firsthand.” Finnead’s lips hardened into that thin line again. A shudder ran through Luca.

  I grimaced as my boot slipped on a rock, tweaking my bad leg. After a few deep breaths, the wave of pain receded. “I don’t need to see him to know that I don’t want to join him.”

  “Not all creatures of Faeortalam are so clearly aligned with the Light and the Dark,” Finnead said. “There is Light and Dark in each of us.”

  I nodded. “I’ve heard that before. I know.” I thought of the sweet triumph of bringing Emery back and the victorious feeling of coaxing Finnead away from the gray cliffs. I was learning that there was a good deal more of Dark in me than I’d realized.

  “So you see, the sirens are creatures of the twilight, the time between night and day.”

  “The Unseelie Court is aligned with the night, and that doesn’t make you Dark.”

  “It was a closer matter than you might realize,” Finnead said softly after a long moment of silence. “Even now there are dissidents within the Queen’s Court.”

  “Like the Vaelanmavar?”

  “Like the Vaelanmavar,” agreed Finnead, his voice hard. “Though he was insidious, gaining the Queen’s confidence long ago and twisting his actions to her purposes. Even now I am not sure whether she will execute him for treason. She cannot be pleased that the fendhionne did not gain possession of the Iron Sword.”

  “Molly would have died if she’d become Bearer,” I said, with more force than I intended. “Not right away—she might have lived long enough to take the Sword into the Deadlands, which I suppose was the entire point.” I walked a little faster, welcoming the jabs of pain in my thigh. “Is Mab’s power really that weak, that she can’t abide the thought of someone else with the Sword?”

  Finnead looked as though he was going to correct me at my blasphemous questioning of the Unseelie Queen, but a slight expression of wonder passed over his face briefly. I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “How does it feel, being able to say what you really think?” I asked.

  “I…It is not something I have ever been able to do,” he said slowly. “The Queen’s power…it is ever-present in her subjects. From our blood-baptism, she is a constant presence.”

  “Blood-baptism?” I stared at him. “I thought the only blood-spell you were under was when she made you one of her Three.”

  “The blood-baptism,” he said slowly, as if he couldn’t believe his ability to pronounce each word, “is nothing quite so strong as becoming one of the Three. Every year on the winter solstice, the Queen places a drop of her blood in the Crystal Fountain. It’s really a spring, capped with a wondrous beautiful fountain crafted of crystal. It stands by the Dark Tree in the center of Darkhill, and every Unseelie child is baptized in its waters.”

  “So one drop of blood, once per year, in the spring,” I said. “And that gives her enough power over all her subjects to know if they speak treason?”

  Finnead nodded. “Yes.”

  “How much of her blood was used when she made you her Vaelanbrigh?” I remembered with a sudden lurch in my stomach the image of the skull-chalice that I’d seen in my vision.

  “Suffice it to say, a great deal more, mixed with wine and some other ingredients.”

  “You have to drink it?” I asked.

  “It is not so foreign of a concept,” Finnead said mildly, arching one eyebrow at me. “If I am not mistaken, you drink blood as well, in the places of your worship.”

  I opened my mouth to reply and then closed it. We did drink blood, even if it did have the bitter-sweet taste of wine. “Point taken. I guess I never thought of it quite like that.” I thought for a moment. “But in any case, if a drop of her blood in the springs gives her that window into everyone’s thoughts…what was it like to be one of her Three?”

  Finnead smiled thinly. “It was an honor to be chosen.”

  “Is the approved answer all you’re going to give me?”

  “Yes.” He
wouldn’t look at me. “For now.”

  “For now,” I repeated, nodding.

  Luca halted so suddenly that I almost ran into him.

  “Luca? Luca, what’s wrong?”

  He didn’t answer, his pale blue eyes staring into the distance urgently. And then he broke into a run, weaving between the rocks, still holding my sword in his left hand.

  “Whoa,” I called as I increased my pace. I managed a jog, but it was nothing compared to his run. “Luca, hey, what’s wrong?” I looked at Finnead. “Go with him, I can’t keep pace.”

  Finnead shook his head. “I’m staying with you. The wolf-warrior can take care of himself.”

  I growled in frustration. “The last thing we need is for us to split up more!”

  “He’ll stop eventually,” Finnead said.

  “How do you know that?” I limped along as fast as I could.

  “Listen.”

  I obediently fell silent, listening as hard as I could, but all I could hear was the harshness of my own breathing and the scrabble of my boots against the rocks. Finnead, of course, walked with the silent grace of a cat. I could still barely see Luca, and then he disappeared around a bend in the river. “I don’t hear anything,” I said. Finnead smiled. I smacked his arm. “If you hear it, I’d appreciate being let in on the secret.” I clenched my teeth and forced my leg to keep moving. Lift the knees, I thought—I couldn’t count the times that my high school track coach had yelled that during a race. Running was all in lifting the knees.

  Finnead leapt lightly over a boulder. “You’ll hear it soon enough. He will stop soon.”

  We rounded the bend in the river and I saw Luca, standing stock-still and gazing up the gorge. And then I heard it, the sound threading through the air like a ribbon, rising and falling over the sound of the river. It was the howl of a wolf.

  Chapter 19

  As soon as we rounded the bend in the Darinwel, I saw two bright little comets appear over the edge of the gorge and rocket down toward us. I could hear Farin shrieking with joy before I could even see the outline of her body in the blazing glow.

  “She sounds like an incoming missile,” I commented dryly.

  “She’s just excited to see you,” Finnead replied with half a smile.

  Forin followed close behind his twin. They reached me before I caught up to Luca. Farin barely slowed her speed and ended up hugging my ear fiercely, still shrieking unintelligible words.

  “Hey,” I said. “Hey, it’s all right Farin, I’m fine, it’s all right.”

  She clung hard to my ear for a long moment and then lapsed into industrious silence. I felt her small hands running over the contours of my body. “Is that really necessary?” I said indignantly—she was clearly intent on a thorough examination.

  Forin bowed gravely to me. “Lady Vell charged my sister with the duty of cataloguing your injuries,” he explained.

  I sighed, and then noticed that Forin was fidgeting. “Yes, Forin?”

  “May I…may I give you a hug as well?” he asked, his small voice gruff with emotion.

  I smiled. “Yes, you may.” Forin hugged my ear as well, and then settled onto my shoulder. Farin reached my leg and gave a little cry of dismay as she inspected the blood-stained bandages. “A creature got his claws into me during the battle,” I explained wearily. I sat on a large rock and craned my neck, trying to see the top of the gorge. I could see the outline of a few figures at the top, and I thought I could pick out Beryk, but I wasn’t certain. “Are any of the others hurt?” I asked Forin.

  “The new wolf-warrior,” he replied.

  “Well, that’s no surprise.”

  “And the navigator, he had a long gash in his arm, but Lady Vell stitched it up.”

  “What about Rialla?”

  “The wolf that Lady Vell shot? She is very pleased that we rescued her warrior,” Forin replied. “She has not left his side.”

  “Beryk?”

  “A few sundry wounds from the battle by the cliffs but nothing serious.”

  I nodded. “So, does anyone have any ideas about how to get us out of this gorge?”

  “If we had three more of us, we could lift you out,” Forin said brightly. “Though I do not know about that one.” He motioned to Luca. “He might be too heavy for us.”

  “I hate to burst your bubble, Forin, but there’s only you and Farin.”

  “An unfortunate fact,” Forin agreed.

  “It is so very inconvenient that you do not have wings,” Farin commented, finishing her inspection. “I shall go report to Lady Vell.”

  “Oh, you’re reporting to her now?” I raised one eyebrow.

  “She took charge after you fell in the river,” Farin replied matter-of-factly.

  “Ask her if she has any rope that could reach this far.”

  Farin gave me a little salute and zoomed away. I studied the wall of the gorge. It was mostly craggy rock, with a few trees struggling out from a patch of soil here and there. I straightened. “Finnead.”

  The Vaelanbrigh looked over at me.

  “I know how to get us out,” I said. “We don’t need a rope that reaches all the way down.”

  “It is a very long way,” he agreed.

  “Look. See that tree there, and then the one above it, and the one above that? They’re spaced out evenly enough that we could use them as anchor points. Tie the rope to the lowest one, climb up to it, have Forin and Farin take the rope to the next highest tree.”

  “What if the trees don’t hold?” Finnead eyed the scraggly trees skeptically.

  “We could use rocks, but if the trees are anything like the ones at home, they have to have some pretty substantial roots to survive growing out of the side of a gorge like that.” I crossed my arms and walked toward Luca to survey the trees from a different angle. “And of course the last person will assume the most risk, because the trees might be loosened a bit by then, especially if anyone falls.”

  “I will climb last,” Finnead said immediately. “And Tess, you will climb first.”

  “I should climb last because I’m the heaviest,” Luca said.

  “Since we both agree that Tess should climb first, let us send her up and then discuss the matter further,” Finnead said coolly.

  “It’s amazing you both agree on something,” I commented.

  “A shared purpose helps to put aside differences,” the Sidhe replied, one hand touching the Brighbranr idly as he followed the route up the side of the cliff with his eyes.

  Forin and Farin reappeared over the side of the gorge, toting a coiled length of rope between them. “This is all the rope that we have,” Forin reported as they deposited the neatly coiled bundle into my waiting hands. “Lady Vell said that she does not think it will be long enough.”

  I eyed the distance to the first tree. “I’m a bad judge of distance, but it looks like forty, maybe fifty feet to the first tree.”

  “The distance between the third and fourth is the greatest,” Finnead said.

  I untied the neat bundle and arranged the coils at my feet, holding the loose end up to Forin. “I need you two to make sure that this rope will reach between each tree.”

  “I will tell Lady Vell of your plan!” Farin said excitedly. Her twin looped the offered end of the rope across his chest twice, arranging it so that it passed precisely between his wings; and he flew away, the rope uncoiling behind him. I gave him a thumbs-up when I saw that the rope would clearly reach from the riverbank to the first tree, and he zoomed on up the rocky cliffside, the rope snaking behind him. He paused at the second tree and surveyed the rope laid out behind him. The bitter end reached well past the first tree. He checked all the lengths, and as he passed the third tree I lost track of the silvery rope among the gray rocks, but Finnead and Luca still watched intently.

  “There’s not much to spare, between the third and fourth,” Luca said, mostly to himself.

  Finally Forin reached the top of the cliff, and disappeared over the edge, the len
gth of rope looking like a mere thread dangling into space. There was a slight overhang at the very top that was going to be difficult to climb, but at least all I had was the Sword, in the way of gear to weigh me down.

  Farin carried the rope back down the cliffside, depositing the free end at my feet. The Glasidhe scout alighted on my shoulder, grasping a handful of hair gently for balance. “Lady Vell says that your plan is just as harebrained as usual,” she said into my ear.

  I chuckled. “Did she tell you to repeat that exactly?”

  “Yes. She also said that it will probably work, unless one of you falls and bashes your brains out on the—”

  “All right, Farin, I get the picture. I don’t think she told you to repeat that part verbatim.”

  “You’re grumpy,” Farin stated.

  “Well, I’m sorry if I’m grumpy after falling from the bridge into a freezing-cold river, battling some pretty nasty sirens—”

  “You saw sirens?” Farin squealed.

  “Ow. Farin, that’s my ear.” I winced at the Glasidhe’s high-pitched little shriek. “And yes, you were there, remember?”

  “We thought they were just merfolk,” Farin said in a hushed tone.

  “Oh. I didn’t know there were mermaids and sirens.”

  “They are two completely different creatures,” Farin explained in that same near-whisper. “They look alike, but I have never seen one or the other before.”

  “Not ever, in all your scouting?”

  “Not ever, in all my scouting,” she replied gravely. “Though perhaps I should have known from the rude way she tried to eat me.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed. Forin flew down from the top of the cliff and gave me a little half-bow.

  “Lady Vell says that she will tie the rope to a boulder when it reaches her at the top, and to be careful,” he reported.

  I nodded. “All right then.” I turned to Luca. “I need you to tie the bandage on my leg tighter.”

  “I will fetch a fresh roll of bandages,” Forin said. “I assume you do not have anything dry after falling into the river,” he added.