The Iron Queen if-3

by Julie Kagawa

  “Sandstorm!” I gasped, stumbling backward. “What’ll we do? There’s nowhere we can really go.”

  “This way,” Grimalkin said, sounding much calmer than I was feeling. A gust of wind tossed sand over his back, and he shook himself impatiently. “We have to get to the cliffs before the main storm arrives, or it could become unpleasant. Follow me.”

  We headed for the cliffs, fighting the sand and wind that shrieked around us, ripping at clothes and stinging exposed flesh. As the storm drew closer, heavier items began to fly through the air, as well. When a pair of scissors hit me in the chest, skittering off the dragon-scale armor, my blood ran cold. We had to get to shelter quickly, or we’d be sliced to pieces.

  The edge of the dust storm roared over me like a tidal wave, screaming in my ears, pelting me with sand and other things. With my eyes squinted nearly closed, I couldn’t see where I was going, and dust clogged my nose and mouth, making it hard to breathe. I lost sight of Grimalkin and the others and struggled blindly through the maelstrom, one arm covering my face, the other held out in front of me.

  Someone took my hand, pulling me forward. I peeked up and saw Ash, head and shoulders hunched against the wind, dragging me toward the looming cliff wall, a dark curtain in the middle of a stormy sea. Puck was already crouched behind a jagged outcropping, huddled against it as streams of sand flowed around him, bouncing odds and ends off the stones.

  “Well, this is fun,” Puck said as we ducked behind the rock, huddled together as wind and sand shrieked around us. “It’s not every day I get to tell someone I was attacked by a pair of flying reading glasses. Ow.” He rubbed his forehead, where a bruise had started to form.

  “Where’s Grimalkin?” I yelled, peering into the raging wind. A plastic doll head struck the rock inches from my face and went bouncing into the storm, and I cringed back.

  “I am here.” Grimalkin materialized behind the rock, shaking sand from his coat in a dusty cloud. “There is a small opening in the cliff wall a few yards down,” he announced, peering up at me. “I am going there now, if you care to follow. It is more comfortable than cringing against a rock.”

  Hugging the wall, arms raised to shield our eyes from sand and flying objects, we trailed Grimalkin along the cliff until we reached a narrow crack, a corridor that snaked away into the rock. The opening was tight and narrow, and there wasn’t much room to do more than stand, but it was better than being out in the storm.

  I squeezed into the corridor, sighing in relief. My ears rang from the shrieking wind, and sand clung to everything: hair, lips, eyelashes. Taking off one gauntlet, I wiped my face, wishing I had a towel, and tried combing the sand from my hair.

  “Ugh.” Puck shook his head like a dog, sending dust and grit flying. Ash glared at him and moved away from the shower, standing beside me. “Ack. Blech. Oh, great, I’m already starting to itch. I’m going to have sand in every crack for months now.”

  Grinning at Puck’s statement, I reached up and ruffled Ash’s hair, sending a rain of dust to the ground. He winced and gave me a rueful look. “I wonder how long the storm will last,” I mused out loud, watching sand hurl past the opening. Catching sight of Grimalkin, grooming rigorously on a nearby rock, I called out to him. “Grim? Any ideas?”

  The cat didn’t even slow down. “Why do you ask me, human?” he asked, licking himself as though his fur was on fire and not just covered in sand. “I have never been here.” He shook his head, then moved on to his paws and whiskers. “We could be here for minutes or days—I am no expert of the sand and wind cycles in the Desert of Lost Things.” His voice was thick with sarcasm, and I rolled my eyes. “Although,” he continued, furiously scrubbing his face, “it might interest you to know there is a tunnel around the corner to the right, half-hidden behind a bush. Perhaps you should see to it that it is empty, and not filled with Iron spiders or something equally unpleasant.”

  We drew our weapons. Talk about a rock and a hard place. The last thing we wanted was to be trapped in a narrow corridor with an enemy bearing down on us and the storm at our backs. With Ash in front of me and Puck bringing up the rear, we edged forward until we found the tunnel Grim was talking about, a gaping slash in the rock wall, dark and uninviting, like the open mouth of a beast.

  Cautiously, Ash poked his sword through the opening, and when nothing immediately leaped out, I eased forward to peer inside.

  At first, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, it looked like an ordinary stone tunnel, maybe to a cave system or something similar. But then I saw that the tunnel had been carved out of the rock, that a clump of familiar white mushrooms grew on the wall near the entrance, and an old metal lantern hung on a nail farther in. This wasn’t a random cave. Someone had been using these tunnels, and recently.

  And suddenly, I knew where we were.

  “Princess, wait,” Puck warned as I stepped in farther. “What are you doing?”

  “I know what this is,” I muttered, taking the lantern off the nail. It still had oil, and I coaxed a tiny flame to life, lifting it up. The light glinted off a toy fire engine lying next to a rock, and I had to smile. “Yes,” I murmured, bending down to pick up the toy truck. “This is a packrat tunnel. I’m sure of it.”

  “Pack what?” Puck frowned as he ducked through the opening, still keeping his daggers out as he glared around uneasily. “Rats? Giant iron rats? Oh, thank goodness, that’s so much better than spiders.”

  “No.” I glared at him as Ash sheathed his sword and stepped into the tunnel, gazing around cautiously. “Packrats. Little Iron fey that carry mounds of junk on their backs. We met them on our first trip through the Iron Realm, when I was looking for Machina. These tunnels should lead right to their nest.”

  “Oh. Awesome. That makes me feel so much better.”

  “Will you stop it? They’re harmless. And they helped us before.” I put down the truck and stepped farther into the tunnel, raising the lantern as high as I could. The burrow snaked away into pitch blackness, but I felt that same odd pull, coming from the dark.

  “Where are you going, human?” Grimalkin appeared on a nearby rock, watching me intently. “Do you know the way through these tunnels? It would be highly annoying if we became lost following you.”

  “I know the way,” I said softly, taking a few steps forward, deeper into the burrow. “And if we can find the packrats, they’ll be able to help us.” Turning around, I saw all three hanging back with varying dubious expressions, and sighed. “I know what I’m doing, guys. Trust me, okay?”

  Ash and Puck shared a brief glance, and then Ash pushed himself off the wall to stand beside me. “Lead the way,” he said, nodding into the darkness. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  “For the record,” Grimalkin stated as we ventured, single file, into the black, “I do not think this is a good idea. But, as no one listens to the cat anymore, I will have to wait until we are completely lost to say ‘I told you so.’”

  THE TUNNELS WENT ON. Like a giant rabbit warren or termite nest, they twisted and curled their way through the mountain, leading us deep underground. I followed the strange pull, letting it guide me through the seemingly endless maze of burrows, Ash, Puck, and Grim trailing behind. The stone-worked tunnels all looked the same, except for the odd broken toy or piece of junk scattered among the rocks. Several times, we passed through a nexus where multiple channels broke off in different directions. But I always knew which way to go, which tunnel to follow, and didn’t even think much about it, until Grimalkin gave a sudden, irritated hiss.

  “How are you doing this, human?” he demanded, lashing his tail in agitation. “You have been here only once, and it is impossible for mortals to memorize directions so quickly. How do you know you are going the right way?”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered, taking us down yet another side passage. “I just do.”

  Puck’s bark of laughter startled me. “See?” he crowed, pointing at Grimalkin, who flattened his ears at him. “You see how i
rritating that is? Remember that, next time you—hey!” he called as Grimalkin disappeared. “Yeah, I can’t see you, but I know you can still hear me!”

  We were getting closer to the packrats’ nest, a fact I knew because of the amount of junk that started appearing in random places: a broken keyboard here, a bicycle horn there. Soon the tunnels were strewn with it, making us watch where we put our feet. Unease gnawed at me; this far in, we should’ve run into a packrat or two. I had been looking forward to meeting them again, wondering if they remembered me. But the tunnels felt empty and cold, abandoned. And they had been that way for a while.

  Abruptly, the tunnel fell away, and we stepped into a huge cavern, with mountains of junk piled farther than we could see. Making our way past the enormous trash heaps, I strained my eyes and ears, hoping to catch a glimpse of the packrats, hear them babble in their funny language. But, in my heart, I knew it was futile. I couldn’t sense any spark of life in this place. The packrats were long gone.

  “Hey,” Puck said suddenly, his voice echoing about the cavern. “Is that…a throne?”

  I drew in a sharp breath. A chair made entirely of junk sat atop a smaller mound of rubbish in the center of the room. On a whim, I walked over to the mound and crouched at the foot of the throne, and began sifting through the debris.

  “Um…princess?” Puck asked. “What are you doing?”

  “Aha!” Straightening, I raised my hand in triumph, brandishing my old iPod. Ash and Puck both gave me confused looks as I tossed the broken device on the mound again. “I just wanted to see if it was still here. We can go now.”

  “I take it you’ve been here before,” Ash said quietly, nodding to the chair. “And that throne wasn’t empty the first time, was it? Who sat there?”

  “His name was Ferrum,” I replied, remembering the old, old man with silver hair that nearly touched the floor. “He said he was the first Iron King, the one Machina overthrew when he took over. The packrats still worshipped him as king, even though he was terrified of Machina.” I felt a faint prick of sadness, staring at the empty seat. “I guess he finally died, and the packrats left when he was gone. I wish I knew where they went.”

  “There is no time to wonder about that now,” Grimalkin said, appearing on the throne cushion, looking disturbingly natural gazing down at us. “This room still stinks of powerful Iron magic. It is corroding your amulets faster than normal. We must press on, or they will stop working right here.”

  Alarmed, I looked at Ash’s crystal and saw he was right. The amulet was nearly black. “Hurry,” I said, jogging from the throne room with the boys at my heels, back into the endless labyrinth of stone. “I think we’re halfway there.”

  A FEW HOURS PASSED, or at least I thought they did—it was so hard to tell time underground—and the fuel in the lantern burned low. We stopped to rest a couple of times, but I found it difficult to stay in one place, becoming restless and antsy until we started moving again. Puck joked that something must be summoning me again, and I didn’t know if he was wrong. Certainly something was drawing me, growing stronger and stronger the closer we got, making it impossible to rest or think until we reached our destination.

  And when the tunnels finally ended, dropping away into a monstrous precipice spanned by a narrow stone bridge, I knew I was almost there.

  “Machina’s fortress,” I said softly, gazing across the chasm, “is on the other side of the bridge. This is the way I took to reach it. We’re almost directly underneath the tower.”

  Puck whistled, the sound bouncing off the walls. “And, you think the false king will be here, princess?”

  “He has to be,” I said, hoping my convictions were right. “It ends at the beginning. Machina is the one who started it all.”

  I hoped. Back when I first came here with the packrats, the area below the tower was known as the Cogworks, due to the massive iron gears, cogs, and pistons that clanked and ground their way along the walls and ceiling, making the ground vibrate. The noise had been deafening, as some of the larger gears had been three times my size. Now, everything was silent, the giant gears cracked and broken and strewn about, as if the entire Cogworks had collapsed on itself. Some lay smashed under huge boulders, evidence that the ceiling had fallen in, as well. When Machina died, his tower had crumbled, destroying everything beneath it. I wondered what it would look like on the surface, how much of the Iron King’s influence had survived.

  Not much, I was afraid.

  We made our way over the bridge, where the stone turned to iron grating, and started picking our way through the smashed clockwork, searching for a way up. As I made my way through the rubble, I noticed strange gnarled roots that hadn’t been here before, coiled around the gears and dangling from the ceilings. I could feel them pulsing with life.

  “Over here,” Ash said, waving us over. A bent iron staircase spiraled up from the rubble, ascending toward a metal grate in the ceiling.

  I felt a surge of excitement and apprehension. Whatever had been calling me was somewhere overhead. Probably it was the false king and we were walking right into his trap, but I had to see what was up there. The boys drew their weapons, and I pulled my blade, feeling my heart pound in my chest, whether in nervousness or excitement, I couldn’t tell. With Ash leading the way and Puck close at my back, we ascended the stairs to Machina’s tower.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE RUINS OF THE IRON KING

  The last time I pushed open the trapdoor to Machina’s tower, I’d been blasted by the heat of a dozen furnaces as I entered the boiler room. In the fiery red glow, dwarves in baggy suits and oxygen masks had shambled back and forth, wielding wrenches and checking leaky pipes. Now, everything was silent, the great furnaces dark and cold. Beams had fallen from the ceiling, pipes were bent and broken, and ash coated everything with a fine gray powder. Those strange roots were also everywhere, snaking in from the ruins above. Through the holes in the ceiling, I could see a section of the tower walls, shiny and metallic.

  “Place looks abandoned to me,” Puck said, tracing a finger through the dust, drawing a smiley face with the tongue sticking out. “I sure hope this is the right spot, princess.”

  I glanced up through the ceiling, following the roots until they vanished from sight. “Whatever we’re looking for, it’s up there. Come on.”

  Using roots and the pile of rocks, we climbed up one last floor. On solid ground again, I straightened and gazed around at what had been Machina’s tower.

  It was a mess, a maze of iron beams, broken glass, and crumpled walls. Gears lay scattered about, rusting and broken, wires and cables dangled overhead, and shattered pipes dripped water and oil onto the floor. Numerous suits of armor, bearing the symbol of a barbed-wire crown on the breastplate, were scattered throughout the ruins like toy soldiers. I shivered, imagining rotting skeletons within those metal suits, but Ash kicked a helmet open and found it empty. It seemed Machina’s Iron knights followed the same rule as the rest of Faery: when they died, they simply ceased to exist.

  Everything was still, as if the very ruins were holding their breath.

  “Looks like nobody’s home,” Puck said, turning in a slow circle. “Hellooooooooo? Anybody here?”

  “Be quiet, Goodfellow,” Ash growled, peering into the shadows with narrowed eyes. “We’re not alone.”

  “Yeah? How do you figure that, prince? I don’t see anyone.”

  “The cait sith has disappeared.”

  “…crap.”

  Meghan Chase, this way.

  A faint glow emitted from the center of the ruins, drawing me to it like a moth to a flame. Without saying anything, I started walking toward it, ducking under beams and around half-standing walls, heading deeper into the maze.

  “Princess! Dammit, hold up!”

  They scrambled after me, muttering curses, but I barely heard them. It was here, whatever was calling me. It was just ahead…

  And then, the walls, ruins, and rubble fell away, revealing an
enormous tree in the center of the tower.

  The oak soared into the air, massive and proud, the trunk so wide four people couldn’t wrap their arms around it. Its huge branches spread over the tower like a roof, blocking out the open sky. The whole tree glimmered like the edge of a blade, metallic and shiny, leaves flashing in the dim light like tinsel.

  “Machina,” I whispered, and stared at the tree in amazement as Puck and Ash finally caught up. “Is it really…could it be?” Easing forward, I walked to the roots of the oak, gazing up at the trunk. Several feet overhead, a stick jutted out of the metal, straight, thin, and—unlike the rest of the tree—made of wood. “There’s the arrow! Oh…oh, wow. This really is him.”

  “Wait, Machina was a tree?” Puck scratched the back of his neck. “I’m a little lost here, princess.”

  “He turned into a tree when I stabbed him with the Witchwood arrow.” I was close to the former Iron King now, so close I could see my distorted reflection in the trunk. “I never imagined it would survive the tower’s collapse.” On impulse, I reached out and touched it, pressing my palm to the shiny surface.

  This is no longer the Iron King, Meghan Chase. I wasn’t really surprised to hear his voice in my head again, though I could feel the power thrumming below my hand. Though the tree was infused with iron all the way to its heart, it wasn’t dying. In fact, it was flourishing. This oak is only the physical remains of his power, and yours. As I told you before, I am with you now.

  “Meghan,” Ash said, his tone full of warning. I stepped back from the tree, breaking the connection, and turned to find we were surrounded.

  Iron fey stared back at us from every corner of the ruins, their eyes glowing in the shadows. From what I could tell, most of them had weapons—mostly iron swords and cross-bows, but a few had guns pointed at us, as well.

  “Meghan Chase,” said a familiar voice, and Glitch stepped out from behind the crowd, the spines on his head crackling with electricity as he shook his head at me. “What the hell are you doing here?”