And then the Stone Knight paused.
Claire tensed, waiting for the blow … but it never came.
Instead, there was another puff of dust as the Stone Knight let his sword tumble to the ground. And then, the knight sank into a low bow—and stayed there.
A deafening silence fell over the odd scene, punctuated only by Claire’s quick breaths. Was it a trick? But the knight stayed still.
Sophie looked impressed. “How did you do that?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Claire said, cautiously looking around. She felt like someone had told her a joke, and she was still waiting for the punch line. But as she took a step forward, a giant crack snapped the air.
Whipping around, she saw something was happening to the wall. Thin, tiny lines had appeared across its once smooth face. They raced across the wall’s surface, converging and meeting to form the outline of an archway.
A second crack filled the air, followed by an explosion of grit and gravel.
“Duck!” Sophie cried. Claire threw her hands over her head as pebbles and dust engulfed them.
Slowly, the air cleared.
A giant stone door stood in the center of the wall, a familiar design of animals and flowers carved into it.
“I guess that’s how you get into Stonehaven,” Sophie said, blinking rapidly as dust fell into her eyes. Claire didn’t say anything; she could only stare. As she watched, the enormous door slowly swung open …
… and an army flooded out.
“Hide the necklace,” Claire whispered, and Sophie shoved the moontears back under her tunic just as soldiers encircled them. Each Gemmer gripped a long spear tipped by a wickedly sharp black rock. Claire had the horrible feeling that if she so much as sneezed, she’d be pinned down as easily as a paper note to a corkboard.
The tallest guard, a man with arms and legs as spindly as a spider but shoulders as wide as a barrel, jabbed his spear in their direction. “Forgers aren’t allowed on Starscrape Mountain,” he said angrily. “You have violated the treaty!”
Claire exchanged a panicked glance with Sophie. Forgers—the Gemmers thought they were Forgers! The leather clothes that Aquila and Anvil had given them were great for traveling and cleaner than the outfit Claire had arrived in, but they’d forgotten that they looked Forger-made.
“We’re not,” Claire squeaked out. But the guard didn’t seem to hear her, or care what she said, because he spoke loudly over her, “As you are violators of the Guild Treaty, we have the right to punish you under Gemmer law. You can come willingly … or not. Your choice.”
“We’ll come willingly,” Claire yelped. “Won’t we, Sophie?”
“Er, yes, very willingly!” Sophie said, her spattering of freckles standing out more than usual.
The tall guard looked slightly disappointed, yet he must have given an invisible signal, because all the spear tips suddenly swooped upward like a startled flock of sparrows. Claire took big, gulping breaths of air. She hadn’t realized how little she’d breathed while the spears had been leveled at them.
“Wraith Watch,” he barked out, “bind their hands.”
“Commander Jasper,” another guard said in a low voice, “is that really necessary? They’re just children.”
“In the light of recent events, any Forger is a threat, no matter how puny they may appear,” Commander Jasper said flatly.
Unease prickled across Claire’s shoulders.
“What events?” Sophie said, asking Claire’s own question.
Jasper’s expression remained emotionless. “The events regarding the Sorrowful Plains.”
Claire sucked in her breath and beside her, she felt Sophie stiffen.
“Yes,” Sophie said, her voice carefully measured, “Unicorn Rock is no longer there …”
“Not just Unicorn Rock,” Jasper said. “Queen Rock, too, is gone.”
Claire’s heart zigzagged in her chest. She felt as if someone had just taken her freshly painted masterpiece, still gleaming with wet paint, and dragged their fingers across it.
“Gone?” she burst out. “Gone where?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Jasper said, as he signaled to the Wraith Watch to begin tying their hands. “It’s not like Unicorn Rock or Queen Rock could have just walked off on their own, now, could they?”
A soft squeak escaped Claire, and Sophie frowned at her. Keep it together, Clairina, her expression read. But Sophie didn’t understand. Only one person in all of Arden could have woken Queen Estelle: Claire, a royal Gemmer princess who shared the same exact Gemmer blood as Prince Martin. And she would never want to wake the queen. But one group did …
Before Claire could stop herself, she heard herself asking, “Is it the Royalists?”
“Diamonds above, no!” Jasper barked out a laugh. “The Royalists and their foolish beliefs! No—this is most likely the work of some Forgers. Only those metal-skulled smiths would have the audacity to obliterate our guild’s greatest monuments.”
“Don’t worry.” Sophie’s breath tickled Claire’s ear as she leaned in close. All the while, the Wraith Watch stepped closer. “Only you could have woken her. There’s no way Queen Estelle is back.”
“But if it’s true …” Claire trailed off. Maybe Sophie wasn’t worried, but Sophie hadn’t been the one who’d traveled through the Petrified Forest and heard the echoes of the long-past unicorn hunt. She hadn’t been the one to hear the queen’s ice-cold voice commanding her armies to kill them all. And now they were willingly entering an entire palace of people whose ancestors had fought for the same queen long ago.
But Claire had no more time to think about it, as Commander Jasper and the Wraith Watch escorted them through the door and into Starscrape Citadel.
“Who are these girls?”
“Did the knight actually bow to them?”
“Commander Jasper, what’s going on?”
A riot of sound surged around Claire as questions flew from the richly dressed crowd that pressed in around them. Everyone, men and women alike, was bedecked in gemstones. They wore great rings, long necklaces, brooches, and earrings. All together, the Gemmers glittered like a night sky.
“What do the Forgerlings want?”
“Where did they—”
“—DIAMONDS ABOVE!” a voice thundered over the rest. “For all that’s strong and stable, return to your evening duties!”
The Gemmers shifted and the crowd parted. Claire could see an old man coming toward them. He hunched over a cane, and the hand that gripped it flashed in the chandelier’s light. As he lurched closer, Claire saw why. His fingers were covered in rings. Big ones, small ones, ones set with river stones and others with diamonds that she was pretty sure Mom would have loved.
But as pretty as they were, the sight was unsettling. Claire had been in Arden long enough to know that the most powerful magic could be done with a single thread, the tiniest drop of potion … or the smallest pebbled ring.
“Go on, then,” the man said, coming to stand in front of them and waving his hands at the Wraith Watch still surrounding Jasper. “Off with you, too. Commander Jasper is plenty of protection from children.”
The guards cast their heads down sheepishly and slowly drifted away with the rest of the crowd, while the old man turned to Jasper. “Terra is waiting for us in her study.”
The commander shifted his spear. “Grandmaster Carnelian, wouldn’t the dungeon be better?”
Carnelian shook his head. “The Stone Knight bowed to them, Jasper. And that changes everything.”
CHAPTER
3
Carnelian set off through the Citadel at a fast clip, and with Jasper’s spear still pointing at their back, the girls followed. Claire was vaguely aware of beautiful stained-glass windows and vaulted ceilings made to look like stone lace, but it was hard to take in anything when so many Gemmers stared as they rushed by. Why had Anvil and Aquila thought this was a good idea? The last time she’d conversed with a grandmaster, Claire had
ended up in a cage.
But as Carnelian opened the lone door at the top of a winding staircase, colored light filled Claire’s view. She gasped as Sophie murmured, “Spectacular!”
A chandelier threaded with different colored gems hung in the center of a high tower ceiling. Though Claire couldn’t see any candles or light bulbs, the stones glowed with their own internal light, throwing splashes of emerald green, ruby red, sapphire blue, and amethyst purple throughout the round, cozy study.
And everywhere, there were unicorns.
In frames as charcoal sketches. On shelves as bookends, propping up tomes with titles like The Unicorn Chronicles and The Hair of a Hare and Horn of a Unicorn. On the floor, a thickly woven rug depicted a unicorn held captive in a garden.
It was as different from the graveyard village below as it could possibly be.
“These are the intruders the Stone Knight bowed down to?” A woman with a heart-shaped face and a cascade of black curls stood from behind a desk and strode toward them. Her emerald gown swished softly, the actual emeralds sewn onto her sleeves iridescent in the light. But what drew Claire to the woman were her eyes.
Framed by a pair of copper spectacles with the thickest lenses Claire had ever seen, her jet black eyes appeared three times the normal size. From the sides of the frames winged out even more lenses that looked as though they could be swapped in to replace the current ones. With her amplified eyes and shimmery dress, Claire thought the woman resembled a beautiful dragonfly.
She flicked a lens. “I thought you would be …” She eyed the girls. “Bigger.” She gestured toward Carnelian. “Please have a seat, Grandmaster.”
“Thank you, Scholar Terra,” Carnelian said as she offered him an armchair. Terra took a seat behind her desk, while Jasper stayed standing, his spear conspicuously by his side.
No chair was offered to Claire and Sophie, so Claire stood as close as she could to her sister.
“Let’s get to the bottom of this,” Terra said as she pulled out a slate and chalk from her desk. “What are your names?”
“I am Sophie Andrea, and this is my sister,” Sophie said, gesturing to Claire, “Claire Elaina Martinson—er, d’Astora.”
That was right, Claire thought, and tried to stand a little taller. They were d’Astoras, as their great-grandfather Martin Martinson, formerly Prince Martin d’Astora of Arden, had changed his name when he stole away to another world.
For a moment, all was still as Terra stared hard at the girls.
Then Jasper let out a hoarse yell. Half a heartbeat later, the tip of his spear was pointed right at Sophie’s chest. “Lies!”
The man’s eyes were so pale that they were the color of ice, though they seemed to burn as they stayed on Sophie. “The audacity of these lowlanders to claim a relationship to the d’Astora family! Grandmaster, I say we take them outside for the wraiths!”
A shriek froze in Claire’s throat. Wraiths—even hearing their names out loud filled her with a bone-numbing fear, with a feeling of being choked by shadows.
“Grandmaster,” Terra said, “if I may be so bold, perhaps that is why the knight bowed. He recognized d’Astora blood.”
Carnelian stared at Claire and Sophie for what seemed an eternity, twisting one of his many rings thoughtfully. Finally, he shook his head. “Your request is denied, Commander Jasper. For now. You—Claire, is it? Do you have any evidence to support what you say?”
Claire tried to say the word bravely, but it came out barely more than a whisper. “Yes.”
“But,” Sophie added, “we can only show you if you promise to stop pointing that thing at me and my sister,” she nodded at Jasper’s spear, “and untie our hands.”
Terra gave a start. “You tied their hands? Really, Jasper! They’re children!” Standing up, she bustled around the desk and with a unicorn-shaped letter opener cut their ties, while Jasper, grumbling, leaned his weapon against the marble wall.
Grandmaster Carnelian drummed his fingers against the armchair, his rings rattling. “Now, your evidence, please.”
Claire held her breath as she watched Sophie tug the silver chain that had been hidden under her neckline. Four luminous moontears dangled from it, shimmering, a quiet beauty unaware of the desperation surrounding them.
Claire’s heart beat faster, as it always did when she saw them.
The Great Unicorn Treasure.
The unicorns’ final chance.
Arden’s last hope.
“By all the diamonds above,” Grandmaster Carnelian said softly.
Reluctantly, Claire dragged her eyes away from the necklace to look at the Gemmer grandmaster. His eyes were overbright, like sunlight’s reflection on water. He smiled faintly, and the deepest lines on his brow smoothed. It was as if merely seeing the moontears had made him younger.
Carefully, Sophie unlatched the necklace’s clasp and laid it on the scholar’s desk.
“Are those …,” Terra said, her voice oddly choked. She leaned forward and flipped through her lenses. Suddenly, she stopped fiddling with the glasses and let out a soft “oh.” She looked up, and Claire was startled to see that the woman’s face was streaked with tears. “I never thought I’d live to see the day. Moontears. May I?”
Claire and Sophie nodded, and Terra gently placed a slender finger on the necklace.
“Oh,” she breathed again, delighted. “They’re warm!”
Sophie smiled. “I thought the same thing, but I told myself it was just all the hiking we’d been doing.”
Commander Jasper looked like a man at war with himself. Though he placed his hands behind his back, he leaned forward eagerly. He opened his mouth several times, before seeming to finally settle on, “How?”
“My great-aunt gave them to me,” Sophie said, and Claire nodded, even though technically, Great-Aunt Diana hadn’t given them to her. Sophie had found the necklace among all the strange treasures of Windemere Manor. Though now that Claire knew a little more about Arden, perhaps the moontears had found Sophie.
As Sophie told their story, careful to avoid certain aspects, like that she’d been accused of stealing the Unicorn Harp from Greenwood Village or that Claire had somehow released the unicorn from Unicorn Rock or that they came from another world, Claire silently filled in the actual details. The full story, from the very beginning.
Three hundred Arden years ago, Prince Martin d’Astora, younger brother to the evil Queen Estelle of Arden—on whose orders all but one unicorn had been slaughtered—had forged the fireplace-chimney-well as a way to escape out of Arden during the terrible war … and into a house in the countryside—in another world. This house had been passed down from generation to generation until Diana. As in, Claire and Sophie’s recently deceased great-aunt Diana.
“And so, we journeyed to Stonehaven to ask for your help,” Sophie finally finished.
“Can you see a way to open the moontears?” Carnelian asked Terra curiously. Claire held her breath. Finally, they would know! Finally, unicorns would return.
Terra knit her brow and stared pensively at the necklace. “I’m not sure,” she murmured, flipping through the lenses again. “I’ve never come across anything, in all my studies, that says how to wake a moontear. In fact, there is no written record of anyone ever actually finding one, let alone studying it.”
Stars, which spent their entire lives emitting light across the universes, would at the end, collapse in on themselves. Claire’s great hope had stretched her, tugged her forward, and now, with a simple sentence, it was gone. And without it, Claire felt her great mission fall away, and herself collapsing alongside it.
“But you’re Gemmers,” Claire said, feeling light-headed and empty. “You’re supposed to know about rock stuff.”
Terra frowned. “Rock stuff, as you so elegantly put it, is only one part. Moontears were merely myth, ‘fallen from the moon and witnessed by starlight’ as Gemmer Historian Eliza the Astute once wrote. These gems are unlike any other—they are unicorn-touched
.”
The scholar settled back in her chair. “But the d’Astora family rose to the Gemmer throne because they always shared a special bond with unicorns. If anyone can discover the moontears’ secrets, it would be a Gemmer princess. So perhaps it is the girls, and not us, who must open them.”
“Diamonds above,” Jasper said so loudly that Claire jumped. He had come around from the desk and now stood next to them. “They’re not princesses! They’re clearly imposters. The grandmaster knows that they’re probably the ones behind the destruction of Unicorn and Queen Rocks!”
“Don’t presume to know what’s in my mind,” Grandmaster Carnelian said, narrowing his eyes, “because you don’t. If you did know what I thought, you’d realize I want you to be quiet … so I can think.”
Jasper’s mouth snapped shut, and Carnelian looked at Terra. “What are you saying?”
Pursing her lips, Terra tapped the sides of her elaborate spectacles. Looking once more between the moontears and the girls, she finally said, “As shocking as it sounds, it is possible these girls are telling the truth and they really are princesses. They brought the moontears here, after all. And with the wraith attacks growing more frequent, we could use the power of unicorns more than ever.”
“This is true.” Carnelian nodded in agreement. “But they clearly have no idea how to access the magic of the moontears, either.” He glanced at the girls. “I’m not even sure they have basic Gemmer skills.”
Claire felt her face get hot, like when you open a toaster oven. “I’ve only known I’m a Gemmer for two weeks now and Sophie—”
“I’m the same,” Sophie cut in. “I’ve only known that I’m a Gemmer for two weeks, too.” Claire didn’t look at Sophie, but the room felt even warmer at her sister’s lie. So far, anyway, Sophie hadn’t demonstrated any magic ability whatsoever.
Silence filled the space around them as the grandmaster and scholar stared intently at each other. Finally, after what seemed like a century, Terra spoke. “We could teach them. If they are truly of the d’Astora bloodline, they might help us find a way to wake the moontears. What do we risk by training them?”
Secret in the Stone Page 2
