Ivy thought of how the little hawthorns and chestnuts had fought against the gol-yagru—how they had torn apart its dark form—and she began to understand. The Ashen could only loathe the Wyrdwood, and fear it. Which meant, at all cost, it must be preserved.
She drew in a breath. “What must I do?”
“Go through Arantus, as I said. Find the door that will take you to the Evengrove. Once you reach the tomb, you will see another door—the one that leads to the moon Tyberion. It is through this door Gambrel will come. You must bind it with magick so he cannot come through.”
“Bind it? I cannot work magick.”
“No, but your friend Mr. Rafferdy is a very powerful magician. You must retrieve him and take him to the tomb. Even now, he and one of his companions wait beside Madiger’s Wall, for they were sent there by their order. There is a door there in the wall.”
She nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen it. It opens into the Evengrove.”
“Rafferdy’s companion has been tasked to open the door. He does not know the reason—to provide Gambrel a way to escape the Wyrdwood. For once the tomb is broken, there will be no way for him to go back through the door to Tyberion. Neth-Bragga will destroy all around it in its fury. Thus Gambrel previously made sure that an initiate could open the door in the wall. There is a path fashioned with the same red stones as the tomb of the Broken God that leads from the tomb to the door. It is Gambrel’s only way out.”
Ivy shuddered, thinking of Mr. Rafferdy standing at the door as the Broken God was freed and the Wyrdwood rose up in fury. Neth-Bragga will be angry after eons of imprisonment, Gambrel had said, and I do not wish for him to turn his wrath upon me.…
Her eyes went wide. Mr. Rafferdy was in the gravest peril!
“What are you waiting for, child?” The man in the mask gripped her arm, shaking her. “Go! And be sure to lock Tyberion before you go through Arantus. That way he will have no escape.”
With that, he pushed her through the door into the house.
She stared back at him. “What of you?”
His shoulders heaved as he drew in a breath. For the first time, Ivy realized that he seemed weary. His ruffled costume was crooked and ill adjusted, as if hastily thrown on. The onyx mask was slightly askew, and there was a slight gap between it and his cowl, from which a stray lock of pale hair protruded.
“I can be no help to you among the trees,” he said, his voice haggard. “I do not think Gambrel summoned more daemons, for that is not easily done. Yet he might have, so I will watch for more gol-yagru. Now get yourself to Arantus and through it—quickly, before all is lost!”
He turned in a flutter of black frills and lace. Ivy gazed out the door of the house for a moment, her heart pounding.
Then she turned and ran. She dashed across the front hall, her footsteps echoing, and through the door to the library. With fumbling fingers she opened the desk drawer and took out the Wyrdwood box. As she touched it, her hands grew steadier, and a warmth crept into her fingers.
With a thought she opened the box and took out the little piece of Wyrdwood. Now that she knew what its true shape was, she wondered how she had not seen it before. She closed her fingers around the piece of wood. Be what you are! she called out in her mind. Then she opened her hand.
On her palm lay a leaf, perfectly carved of wood.
A sigh of pleasure escaped her; it had felt good to shape the wood—or rather, to unshape it. Gripping the leaf, she turned and dashed out of the library, then up the stairs to the gallery on the second floor.
She went first to the door in the south wall, to Tyberion. As she drew near, she detected an acrid smell, like that which had permeated the air after Captain Branfort fired his gun. There were black marks on the floor. The door was not shut all the way, but rather had been left slightly ajar, so that there was a small crack. Ivy hesitated a moment, then she bent forward and peered through the gap.
A breath of wonder escaped her. Through the door, she glimpsed not a brick wall, but a barren, gray-blue plain, its surface pockmarked and littered with jagged rocks. Above the curved horizon, brilliant stars blazed in the sky alongside an enormous violet sickle shape, like a gigantic crescent moon.
Only it wasn’t a moon, she knew. Rather, it was the planet Dalatair, and the place through the door was the face of its satellite, Tyberion. Her eyes roved further, and here and there she saw shapes that stood up from the ground: archways fashioned of the gray-blue stone. They were doorways, though those close enough to see contained only darkness within their frames. Above the doors she detected a faint bluish shimmer against the black void, like a dome of azure glass.
Ivy blinked. How long had she been standing there, fascinated by the sights through the door? Now she remembered her task, and a fresh urgency came over her. She pulled on the door, shutting it with a click. Then she examined it in the pale light that came through the windows. After a moment she saw it: the piece of wood carved like a gem. It was, as she had guessed, set into the pommel of the sword carved upon the door. Ivy reached out and gripped the wooden jewel with her fingertips.
The key to Tyberion came away in her hand.
Ivy could not help a small smile as she slipped the key into her pocket. Gambrel would not be coming back this way.
Now to the other door. Ivy turned and moved swiftly across the gallery. The shroud that covered it glowed in the moonlight. She cast it aside, revealing Arantus.
Several times before, as she looked at the door, she had felt there was something missing from it, only she hadn’t been able to discern what it was. Perhaps it was an effect of the moon’s illumination, or perhaps it was because she knew now what it was that was missing. Either way, this time she saw it at once. In the center of the door was an odd shadow: a slight gap in the pattern of the carved leaves. There was just space enough where one more might fit. She took the wooden leaf and set it into the niche in the door.
There was a click, and the door swung open.
“Oh,” Ivy murmured.
The sight before her was not unlike what she had glimpsed through the door Tyberion, only the surface of this moon was smoother: a pale gray-green marked by ripples and crisscrossed by fine lines. The lavender crescent of Dalatair hung in the sky, though at a different angle, and the stars all around it blazed like diamonds and emeralds and sapphires. Ivy drew in a breath, holding it.
Then she stepped through the door.
At once a coldness bit into her skin, as bitter as the shortest, coldest lumenal. Her breath escaped her in a gasp of surprise, fogging upon the air. She drew in another, stuttering lungful. She had feared the atmosphere upon the moon might be a poisonous miasma. Instead, while there was a stale, metallic taste to it, and it was viciously cold, the air seemed to cause no harm to her. She looked up and, as on Tyberion, saw a faint dome of translucent blue overhead. It was as the man in the mask had said—some enchantment protected this place from the aether of the heavens.
Ivy cast a glance behind her. Through the door she could still see the moonlit gallery. Reassured, she walked across the dusty blue plain. Just ahead, she saw them: stone doorways that scattered the surface of the moon. Unlike those she had glimpsed through Tyberion, these doors led not to empty darkness. Rather, she could glimpse faint light through them.
She approached the first one, and she let out an exclamation of delight, for it was like looking out the window of her attic room at Heathcrest Hall. She saw rolling moors bathed in moonlight, and not far off a line of straggled shapes bounded by a stone wall.
Ivy hurried to the next doorway. This time there was less light, and it took a moment to make out a tangle of black trunks and crooked branches. A rushing sound emanated from the doorway as a wind stirred their leaves. Was this where she needed to go?
No. It was a grove of Wyrdwood, but these trees were not thick and tall enough. She moved on, hurrying to the next door, and the next. Through a few of them she saw other copses of Old Trees, sometimes nearby, sometimes at a dist
ance. However, most of the doors gazed out over empty fields or opened onto cobbled streets.
Ivy began to understand. The man in black had said that the doors on Tyberion all led to various places in the world. By them, magicians could have moved about swiftly. Logic implied that the doors here on Arantus were similar. However, it was her guess that these doors had not been intended to help magicians travel swiftly, but rather witches.
Long ago, she supposed, all of these doors had led to various places within the Wyrdwood. But over the centuries, so many of the Old Trees had been cut down and burned, and villages, towns, and cities had been raised in their place. Had there once been a grove upon the spot where the house on Durrow Street now stood? If so, a new grove now sprouted where the old had once grown.
She kept moving. Then her heart leaped as she came to another door that opened into a grove of trees. Though crooked and shedding their leaves, these trees were tall and powerful, woven into a dense fabric that had never been cut, never been frayed or torn.
The man in the black mask was right. She did know.
Ivy cast a glance behind her. She could still see the door she had come through in the distance, and even a glimpse of the gallery beyond. However, it was to another place she had to go.
It was for this purpose that the way station had been constructed eons ago—so women just like her might move among the groves. The builders had placed it here, far removed from the world, so that the enemy would not know of it. While, in the end, the Ashen had discovered the way station on Tyberion, and had destroyed the doors there, it was clear they had never found what had been hidden on Arantus. Ivy turned to face the door. For a moment she stood there, bathed in the purple light of Dalatair.
Then she stepped through the doorway.
Ivy let out a breath of dry, frigid air one moment, then drew in one rich and moist and warm with life the next. She thought of the way the trees in the garden had lifted her up to bear her upon their branches. Then she reached out, touching the rough bark of the ancient trunks around her.
There are two magicians by the wall that bounds you, Ivy called out with her thoughts. Hurry—you must take me to them!
And the Wyrdwood listened to its witch.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE MORE RAFFERDY watched the landscape out the window, the slower it seemed to creep by.
He slumped back against the upholstered bench. His head ached from the incessant vibrations of the carriage, and his throat was dry from lack of anything to drink. An hour ago, the driver had brought them to a halt at an inn by a crossroads, and he had climbed down to ask if Rafferdy wished to stop for something to eat. However, Rafferdy had no appetite, not after the things he had witnessed that day. And while he would gladly have drunk down several glasses of whiskey, if given the chance, it was better that he kept full command of his faculties. There was no telling what he would have to do when they arrived at Madiger’s Wall. He told the driver to climb back up to his perch, and to continue on with all haste.
He winced as the carriage was jolted by a particularly deep rut. Outside, the hills and fields were beginning to fade from gold to ash gray.
“Come on, hurry it along,” he said through clenched teeth, even though he knew the horses could go no faster than they were.
Besides, in his note, Coulten had written that he still had to go to the magus of the order to receive his instructions. Nor was it possible that he might travel to the wall any more quickly than Rafferdy; horses could only run so fast. Which meant Coulten could not be very far ahead of him. All the same, Rafferdy leaned forward in the seat, as if to be sure to arrive not a moment later than possible.
Ever since leaving the city, a dread had been steadily growing in him that he was already too late—that when Coulten went to the magus he had been taken to the inner sanctum to be made into one of the gray men. Or perhaps he had been delivered to Mertrand and the sages of the High Order of the Golden Door. As peculiar as Lord Farrolbrook had acted earlier that day, his words had all possessed a ring of truth, and he had said it was the Golden Door that was the source of many of the gray men.
By what terrible enchantment it was done, Rafferdy could not imagine, though he could guess Lord Mertrand’s methods well enough. Young men who could trace their ancestry to one of the seven Old Houses would be recruited, enticed with promises of power, and eventually invited into a secret chamber. There, an eldritch symbol would be drawn upon their hand. Then, by means of some unspeakable magick, a daemon would be summoned and placed within the vessel of their body. Surely that was what had happened to the man who had tried to harm King Rothard at the opening of Assembly, and to the man who had destroyed the Ministry of Printing.
And it was what had happened to Eubrey as well.
That the person who had heretofore resided within that mortal shell survived this process was impossible. Rafferdy had only to recall the dead look in Eubrey’s eyes to know it for a fact. A shudder passed through him, and he wondered—would he see the same flat, empty expression in Coulten’s gaze if he did find his friend at the wall?
Only, he could not think that way. According to Farrolbrook, Lord Mertrand had made a bargain with the magus of another order—the Arcane Society of the Virescent Blade, Rafferdy was sure. Farrolbrook had said this magus was sending a magician to Madiger’s Wall to perform an experiment, and it could only be Coulten. Eubrey had not yet been made a gray man when he was sent to the wall to do his task, and Rafferdy had to hope it was the same for Coulten.
The carriage gave a violent lurch, and Rafferdy supposed they had hit another rut. Only then the fields ceased to move outside the window, and the rattling of the carriage ceased. They had come to a halt.
Rafferdy was out the door before the driver could climb down from the bench. A purple gloom was thickening on the air. Across the fields, a quarter mile away, he could see a dark line surmounted by ragged shapes.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the driver said from his perch, “but I don’t believe I can go any closer. I’ve heard reports that no one is being allowed near Madiger’s Wall, and I can see soldiers ahead.”
Rafferdy could just make them out in the gloaming. There were several redcrests standing beside a wooden barricade that lay across the road. The men were lighting lanterns against the coming dark.
“Turn the carriage around,” Rafferdy said. “Go back around the bend until you’re out of sight of the wall, and then stop there.”
The driver nodded, and Rafferdy climbed back into the carriage, going about it slowly to be sure the soldiers had seen him get in. The driver brought the horses around, and the carriage turned, going back down the road and away from the wall. Then it came to a halt, and Rafferdy climbed back out. The barricade and the soldiers were no longer in sight.
“Now what, my lord?” the driver called down. “Do we make back to the inn, or all the way to Invarel?”
“Wait for me,” Rafferdy said, and without waiting for a response, he struck out across the fields, cane in hand.
He walked through the tall grass, going a full furlong perpendicular to the road before he turned to start making his way back toward the Evengrove. After some distance he crested a low rise and saw it again before him—the long line of gray stone, crowned by straggled shapes. He was now out of view of the barricade across the road, but in the gloom, he could see points of light bobbing as they moved to and fro. There were soldiers patrolling back and forth along the base of the wall. Rafferdy let out an oath. How was he going to get past them without being seen?
Even as he considered this, a column of blue light shot upward, cutting a livid gash in the dusky sky. For several heartbeats the column glowed hotly in the distance, somewhere past the soldiers’ barricade, then it fell back on itself and was abruptly snuffed out. Rafferdy heard the faint sound of shouting. Now all the points of light along the wall were moving in one direction—toward the place where the gout of blue fire had sprung up.
Despite his dread, he let
out a laugh. Coulten was cleverer than Rafferdy sometimes gave him credit for. In a recent meeting of the society, the sages had described how certain volatile chemicals might be placed in two chambers of a box, with a magickal barrier between them. If the enchantment was fashioned carefully, it would expire after a prescribed period, at which point the two chemicals would mix and react.
That Coulten had used this very method to arrange the diversion, Rafferdy was certain. What’s more, it meant that Coulten himself could not yet have reached the wall. The soldiers would have kept him at bay. Only now all of the points of light had moved off into the distance, past the barricade. Along the section of the wall before Rafferdy, there were no lights at all, only gloom and shadow.
Gripping his cane, Rafferdy started toward the wall at a rapid pace. He imagined Coulten had stationed himself as close to the door as possible, ready to dash to it once the soldiers all ran off toward the commotion. Which meant Coulten would likely get there first.
Rafferdy was right. He was still a good fifty paces from the wall when he saw a line of crimson sparks flicker into being. Glancing down at his ring, he detected a faint glow within the blue gem—an answering echo to the magick that had just been worked up ahead.
“Blast you, Coulten,” Rafferdy growled under his breath. “Don’t you dare step through that door.”
Rafferdy picked up his cane and broke into a run as he crossed the last distance to the wall. He arrived just in time to see the last of the red stones fade away, leaving the crimson line of runes hanging in midair. A man with a tall crown of hair stood before the opening. He started to step toward it, only then he turned around at the noise behind him.
“Rafferdy!” Coulten cried, pressing a hand to his chest, then hurriedly lowered his voice. “Good God, but you gave me an awful fright. I thought that you were a soldier come upon me.”
Rafferdy let out a breath, not only from exertion, but also from relief. Even in the dimness, it was clear from his words and the expression on his face that this was still the Coulten he knew.
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