The Iron Raven

by Julie Kagawa

  4

  TROUBLE IN PHAED

  I remembered when I first set foot in Phaed. It was several years ago, when Ash was just starting his quest to find a way to be with Meghan in the Iron Realm. Being a true-blooded fey, he couldn’t exist in the Iron Kingdom without being poisoned and dying, so logically, he made a binding vow that he would find a way to return to his love and be with her, no matter how long it took, no matter what he had to do.

  I went with him of course, because it sounded like an adventure, and there was no way the love-struck idiot would’ve survived without me.

  We’d been following our guide through the Deep Wyld, the darkest and most dangerous part of the wyldwood, when a thick fog had rolled in, and we’d stumbled upon this ramshackle little town in the middle of nowhere. The residents of said town were strange, faeries I’d never seen before, who seemed to drift in and out of existence at random. Back then, I didn’t know anything about the Forgotten, or Phaed, or what our presence would ultimately do. That first night, we discovered the Forgotten could drain the glamour of traditional fey like creepy faery vampires, and we had to beat a hasty retreat out of town before they sucked us dry.

  But the Forgotten weren’t the only creatures in Phaed, and our, um...disturbance through town woke up something far older and far more dangerous than we could have realized.

  The Lady. The ruler of the Nevernever before the existence of the courts. She had been sleeping in Phaed, forgotten by everyone, and was none too happy when she woke up and discovered everything had changed.

  Of course, that led to the war with the Forgotten, the Lady’s rise to power as she tried to take back the Nevernever, and the whole mess with Keirran and his betrayal, but that was water under the bridge. As far as I was concerned, Ash and Meghan’s son was all right. He’d made some stupid mistakes, but hell, we all had. I certainly wasn’t one to talk.

  Still, as the mist rolled back and we abruptly found ourselves at the edge of an ancient, run-down village, I caught the haunted look in his eyes as he gazed around. For him, this was the place where it all started.

  “Strange,” he said quietly. “I don’t see anyone, but I can feel something out there.”

  I gazed into the town. It looked the same to me; wooden shacks abandoned and falling apart, sitting in the mud and fog. On the nearest porch, an old rocking chair creaked back and forth, swaying eerily in the breeze.

  “It’s quiet,” I observed, and lowered my voice ominously. “Too quiet.” Both Keirran and Grimalkin shot me exasperated looks, and I grinned. “Oh, come on, someone had to say it.”

  The Forgotten King sighed and stepped gracefully onto the path, avoiding the worst of the mud. “Let’s go,” he ordered. “Everyone stay close, and keep your eyes open. If something is still here, we don’t want it to catch us by surprise.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “Surprises are bad. No one likes surprises. Unless it’s your birthday and everyone is throwing you a party, but I don’t think we’re going to turn a corner and have the town scream Surprise! while showering us with confetti.”

  “Do people do that for fun now?” Nyx frowned, looking puzzled. “That sounds like a good way to be stabbed.”

  “Um, yeah. Remind me never to throw you a surprise party.”

  We headed toward the center of town, picking our way between puddles while trying to keep an eye on the houses lining the road. Nothing moved in the mist and shadows, no silhouettes appeared in windows and doorways, no eyes peered at us just beyond the light, but my skin started to crawl the moment we started down the path. It felt like we were being watched.

  And there was something else. Something heavy in the air, making the hairs on my neck stand up and my fingers twitch for my weapons. It felt...angry. Not just angry. Hateful. Murderous. And it was getting stronger the closer we got to the center of town.

  “Does anyone else feel that?” Nyx whispered, sounding strained.

  Keirran nodded grimly. “It’s him.”

  I frowned. “Him?”

  “The thing we were chasing before,” Nyx clarified. Her voice was slightly ragged, as if she was fighting to keep her emotions at bay. I couldn’t tell if it was fear, anger, or both. “It’s some kind of...monster. Not a faery, not a Forgotten. I don’t know what it is, but wherever it goes, it leaves a trail of corruption behind it.”

  “Corruption?” I echoed. “What, like the Iron fey?” Meghan’s subjects, though they were peaceful and mostly kept to themselves, still had a faint damaging effect on the Nevernever if they ventured outside of the Iron Realm. This caused some concern to the courts of Summer and Winter, who required that the Iron fey get permission from the court rulers if they wished to set foot in the territories other than the wyldwood. Fortunately, the Iron fey seemed pretty content to remain in the Iron Realm or the real world, where the corrupting influence of their glamour had no effect.

  Nyx looked confused, and I remembered that she probably didn’t know anything about the Iron fey or their kingdom, having never seen them before. But Keirran shook his head.

  “Not exactly,” he told me. “It’s similar, but an Iron faery poisons the land with the Iron glamour they leave behind. The corruption is weak, but the effects are physical—withered leaves, dead grasses, that sort of thing. This is more of an emotional corruption. You can’t see it, but it can be felt. And the Forgotten, since they have no glamour of their own, feel it more intensely than other fey.”

  “Oh, that’s good. And here I thought the lovely atmosphere was making me twitchy.” Glancing behind me, I winced. “Also, not to freak anyone out, but Furball has disappeared.”

  Nyx gave me a puzzled look. “What does that mean?”

  Keirran sighed and drew his sword. “It means something is coming.”

  We had reached the center of town, which was a large open square with a dusty fountain crumbling to pebbles in the middle. I recognized it from the last time I was in Phaed, as well as the two-story, ominous-looking building ahead that, if I remembered correctly, served as an inn or hotel of sorts. Though, now that I thought about it, why would this town even need a hotel? No one came through Phaed except faeries on their way to die. And us, of course. Which was a rather morbid realization, and one that I hoped was not a sign.

  As we drew closer to the open square, that feeling of simmering anger grew stronger, deeper, almost pulsing from the ground like it was alive. Abruptly, Nyx staggered, putting a hand on a crooked lamppost to steady herself. I hesitated, and Keirran stepped toward her, his expression tight with concern.

  “Nyx. What is it?”

  “The square,” she whispered, and pointed with a shaking hand. “The creature. It’s...here.”

  I saw it then. Or, rather, I felt it. The square was pulsing with negative energy: anger, madness, fear, hate, swirling around in a toxic mist of murky glamour. As I watched, shadowy tendrils began emerging from the ground, writhing about like inky snakes. Dark forms pushed through the surface, clawing their way aboveground, like zombies rising from the grave.

  A chill slid up my spine. They were weird, spindly things, their bodies featureless, like a horde of shadows had broken away from their hosts to move about on their own. But their heads were clearly visible; bleached animal skulls crowned with antler-like horns, each one more disturbing than the last. Tendrils of darkness writhed on their backs and shoulders, whipping about in a frenzy as the things pushed their way out of the ground.

  I drew my daggers, feeling like someone had dropped a bucket of ice cubes down the back of my shirt. I’d seen a lot of weird crap, but for some reason, these ghouls were on another level of the creepy scale. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, as my stomach took one look at the creatures and recoiled violently. “Okay, what the hell are those? Keirran?”

  The Forgotten King shook his head, his face grim as he raised his sword. “I don’t know,” he said, and his voic
e sounded a bit strained. “But I think...they might be Forgotten.”

  “What? How?”

  Straightening, the horde of nightmare things turned, empty eye sockets black and cold as they fastened on us. I felt an almost physical hatred radiating from them, waves of icy contempt slapping me in the face. With each pulse, I could feel their thoughts, and they weren’t anything nice.

  Intruders. Outsiders. Not like us. Destroy.

  Silent as death, the things glided forward.

  I gave a yell and leaped backward, dodging the first nightmare thing as it swept in, seeming to float over the ground rather than walk. It didn’t claw or reach for me with its thin, bony talons; rather, the tentacles on its shoulders flailed, lashing out like whips. I sliced at one that came toward me, cutting it in two, and the tendril spasmed like a severed worm as the thing recoiled. That cold, droning voice echoed in my head again.

  Hate. Hate. Hate you. Kill.

  “These things aren’t really the friendly type, are they?” I quipped, dancing back as the monster hissed and pressed forward, raking with its claws now as well. “I’d hate to see the welcoming committee.”

  Keirran dodged a swipe from a tentacle, leaped back to avoid a slashing claw, and ducked around a tree to put distance between himself and his attacker. He was not, I noticed, attacking back or using his weapon in anything but defense. His last words rang in my head, grim and terrible as he realized what these monsters could be.

  They might be Forgotten.

  Keirran was reluctant to harm his people, reluctant to use his power on the Forgotten he’d sworn to protect. Which was all well and good normally, but now, when said Forgotten were trying to shove their tentacles up our backsides, it was less than ideal.

  Nyx, on the other hand, had no such compulsion, especially when it came to protecting her king. She spun and danced around Keirran with that deadly grace I’d seen before, her moonblades flashing in lethal arcs that left silver tracers in the air. One blade sliced through the arm of a creature reaching for Keirran, and the thing hissed, clutching the shadowy stump of a limb.

  I dodged an onslaught of flailing, thrashing tentacles, as a pair of skull-head things came at me from two directions. I ducked, but a reaching tentacle brushed the side of my head, and the stab of cold that came with it was instant and breathtaking. It was like being jabbed in the ear with an icicle that went straight into your brain.

  For a moment, rage flared. Dancing back, I glared at the thing that had stabbed me, suddenly hating it, wanting to knock its ugly, disturbing head from its shoulders. Two of them followed my retreat, chasing me across the square, and I felt my lips curl in an evil grin.

  “All right, ghouls. You wanna play with Robin Goodfellow? Let’s play, then.”

  Still backing away, I sheathed one dagger, reached into my hair, and pulled out a raven feather, the short black quill barely visible in the darkness. I didn’t do this little trick often, but these guys had pissed me off, and I was mad now. I felt the surge of glamour to my fingertips, the darker side of Summer magic: chaotic and wild and uncontrolled. The energy of lightning storms, wildfires, tornados, and hurricanes.

  I called it to me and released it into the feather, and as the shadow things continued to press forward, I raised my hand and opened my fingers, letting it spiral up into the sky.

  For a heartbeat, nothing happened. The shadows continued to pursue me around the square, swiping with long talons or flailing with their tentacles. From the corner of my eye, I could see Keirran and Nyx surrounded by three skull creatures. Keirran was finally using some of his power, but it was still to keep the ghouls at bay, not to hurt any of them. He gestured, and a barrier of ice spears thrust out of the ground between him and the monsters. I glanced just in time to see Nyx spring over the ice wall, do a midair flip, and slam her foot into the back of a ghoul’s head as she came down. The ghoul staggered forward, impaling itself on a spear of ice, and Nyx continued her deadly dance into the next two.

  Thrashing tentacles filled my vision, as one of the monsters chasing me around the edges of the square lunged, swiping with a claw. I threw myself backward, rolled to avoid the writhing tendrils, and came up on my feet, smiling viciously. The two shadow things paused, watching me with cold, dead eyes.

  A harsh, guttural caw rang out somewhere overhead, and a single black bird swooped out of the darkness. It circled the shadow things, then fluttered up to perch on my shoulder, digging tiny but sharp claws into my shirt. The raven cocked its head, eyed the monsters with a beady black eye, and ruffled its feathers with another croaking caw.

  Another answered it. And another. The flutter of wings filled the air as dozens of black forms began swooping from the sky and circling overhead. The shadow things paused, staring at the birds filling the air, but after a moment their gazes fell to me again, and they pressed forward once more.

  A raven darted from the sky, zipping past the creature’s bleached skull, making it flinch. A second swooped in and sank its talons into the side of its head, cawing and beating its wings. The ghoul slapped it away, only to have another take its place, and a second and third, until half a dozen ravens clung to it, all shrieking and flapping wildly, pecking with sharp beaks. The raven on my shoulder left its perch to join its brethren, and for a moment, the scene was almost comical: a mob of creepy, shadowlike monsters with bleached skulls for heads, flailing wildly as they were beset on all sides by ravens. Claws slashed and tentacles flailed, swatting birds from the air. Ravens fell like flies, but this was just the preliminaries.

  With a cacophony too loud for words, a massive cloud of shrieking, flapping ravens descended on the creatures from above. They swarmed like a horde of locusts on a cornfield, and the shadow things stood no chance. In seconds, the two vanished into a swirling mass of wings, feathers, beaks, and talons, and whatever sounds they made were drowned in a torrent of caws and guttural screams.

  It lasted only seconds, though the noise made it feel a lot longer. The cloud of ravens broke apart, and the flock dispersed as the birds flew off in different directions, vanishing into the night once more. Of the shadow things, nothing physical remained, not even their skulls, just a few ragged wisps of darkness dissolving in the breeze.

  I shuddered, then looked to where Keirran and Nyx had been fighting shadow monsters of their own, only to see that the fight was over. Nyx, surrounded by fading tentacles, gave her blades a final flourish before they vanished into mist in her hands. Keirran, however, was staring at me, the look on his face one of astonishment and concern.

  “I’ve never seen you do that before,” he said, in a voice that teetered on the edge of disapproval.

  I shrugged. Now that the battle was over and my adrenaline was going down to acceptable levels, I felt...almost ashamed of myself. What the heck was I thinking, using that technique? That type of glamour use—that wild, furious, terrifying magic, the glamour of fear and utter chaos—wasn’t me. At least, not anymore. A very long time ago, back when the world was younger and much less civilized, the name Robin Goodfellow had inspired as much fear as any demon or devil today, but it wasn’t anything I’d want to go back to.

  Keirran was still watching me, his eyes shadowed. With a sigh, I sheathed my remaining dagger and turned to face him fully. “It’s not a trick I pull out of my hat often, princeling,” I confessed. “Tends to freak people out when they see it.”

  “Those were Forgotten that you killed. Both of you.” He looked at Nyx as well, an edge of anger in his voice now. “I could feel it. I don’t know what happened to them, but they were definitely Forgotten. We might have reasoned with them.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I crossed my arms. “But they were trying to kill us first. And that violated my most important rule—don’t die. Also, don’t get stabbed, another very important rule. If something is trying to shove unpleasant things through my insides, I’m not gonna stand there and let them do it.
”

  “I have to agree with Puck, Your Majesty,” echoed Nyx. “Those may have been Forgotten once, but they were attempting to do you harm. As I served the Lady, I now serve you, and my oath remains.”

  “We could have talked to them. Those were your people, Nyx.”

  The silver-haired faery regarded him calmly, her eyes unyielding. “I am not a diplomat, my king,” she said. And her voice was not bitter or angry or prideful; she was simply and quietly stating a fact. “My skills are not of charm and voice and turn of phrase. I do not have the talent or the inclination to persuade anyone. I am one thing only, and that is a trained killer. My past is hazy, but I do remember that. The purpose of my existence is to protect my liege and to eliminate those they command me to eliminate.”

  “And if I order you not to eliminate anyone?”

  “Then I will obey to the best of my ability, but if someone threatens your life, I am honor bound to kill them. I do not know any other way.”

  Keirran sighed. He didn’t seem pleased, but he wasn’t going to argue, either.

  I took the opportunity to change the subject. “So, you said those were Forgotten. Are you sure about that, princeling?” He glanced my way, frowning, and I shrugged. “I don’t recall any Forgotten having an affinity for wearing skulls on their faces. Or being so very, very angry.”

  “I’m sure,” Keirran replied firmly. “There’s no doubt in my mind. Those were Forgotten.” A pained look crossed his face, and he shook his head. “I don’t know what happened to them, or what caused them to attack, but it’s something we need to get to the bottom of, quickly.”

  “That I do agree with,” I said. “Because those guys were not friendly at all. Any idea what caused them to hulk out on us?”

  “Something changed them,” Nyx said. “Those Forgotten weren’t like that before. What has happened to Phaed and everyone?” She closed her eyes momentarily. “This anger... It’s unnatural. I can sense the hatred of this place, pulsing from the ground. It makes me want to hurt something.” She glanced at me, and for a split second, a flash of cold rage in those golden eyes made me want to reach for my daggers. But then she winced, and her expression returned to normal, as did my heartbeat.