Arrow (Knife) (27 page)

The full moon had risen above the trees now, glowing with baleful power. Something flashed out from the shadows of the wood, and Rhosmari turned just in time to see a wall of blue light sweep across the meadow, and break like a tidal wave over the Oak.

‘Great Gardener!’ exclaimed Campion as the spell enveloped the tree, covering it from root to high branches. ‘What is
that
?’

Dizziness swept through Rhosmari as the Oak’s protective wards burned away. The enormous trunk groaned and began to twist sideways, as though some invisible giant had gripped it with both hands and was ruthlessly wringing it out. The branch beneath them shuddered, and all the faeries flung their arms around the nearest twig and held on tight.

Then came a chorus of screams from inside the Oak, followed by a rumbling, splintering crash that seemed to go on and on. It sounded as though the whole inner structure of the tree was falling down. But Queen Valerian was still in there, thought Rhosmari with a stab of dread, and all the other faeries who had been helping her ward the Oak—

All at once the shaking stopped, and the tree was still. And in that moment, a voice rang out over the Oakenwyld, loud enough to bring all the fighting to a halt.

‘Rebel faeries of the Oak, you cannot win this battle. Lay down your arms and surrender, or I will tear your precious tree apart.’

With an effort, Rhosmari pulled herself back up to her feet. Where was the Empress? She must be using a spell to project her voice, for she could not see her anywhere. It seemed impossible that any faery could wield such devastating power – but after what she had just experienced, there could be no doubt that Jasmine’s threat was real.

Yet something seemed to be wrong with the Empress’s soldiers. Some staggered about the battlefield, leaning on their weapons for support. Others stood with drooping heads and arms loose at their sides. Only a few – like Veronica and the Blackwings – remained alert, and Rhosmari caught her breath as she realised what the Empress had done.

‘She’s pulling magic out of her followers,’ said Campion, aghast. ‘Using their power to enhance her own.’

Of course. And it fit the pattern Jasmine had followed in the past, as well. When she cast the Sundering, she had used the Oakenfolk’s magic to do it, and now she was drawing on her soldiers’ magic in much the same way – making her strong enough to warp the Oak itself.

‘But that means we can’t stop her,’ Linden whispered. ‘Not unless we kill all of
them
first—’

‘Why do you hesitate?’ called the Empress, impatient now. ‘Surely your choice must be obvious. Do you wish the Oak to survive, or must I break it into splinters?’ And with that the trunk began to warp again, and another tremor rocked the faeries off their feet. The loreseed tumbled from Rhosmari’s hand, skidding towards the edge of the branch; she flung herself flat and grabbed it just in time.

‘Yet it would pain me to destroy such a magnificent Wyld,’ the Empress went on, her voice all honey and butter again. ‘And it is not your deaths that I desire, only your allegiance. Can we not cease this foolish quarrelling, and agree to live together in peace? I would be glad to offer you all my pardon – if you hand over to me Rhosmari daughter of Celyn as my prisoner.’

There was a terrible silence, while blood pounded through Rhosmari’s ears.
This
was why Jasmine had sent her army against the Oak? Not to destroy the rebels, but to recapture her?

‘If you have the power to defeat us,’ Rob called out, ‘then why not do it, and take Rhosmari for yourself? I think,
Empress
—’ his tone made a scathing mockery of the title— ‘that you are weaker than you wish us to believe, both in power and in numbers. If you destroy the Oak it will take all your remaining strength, and leave your followers too drained to fight. Tonight’s victory may come at a terrible cost – but it will be our victory, and not yours.’

Rhosmari’s hand clenched around the loreseed. Did Rob really mean that the way it sounded?

‘Is that so?’ said the Empress. ‘Ah, my Robin, you think yourself so clever, but you have always been short-sighted. Even if you should murder every faery in my host tonight – and I know you too well to believe that you would ever carry out such a threat – you cannot prevent me from escaping. And then I have only to raise another army, and come back. It will take time, but I am willing to be patient. Especially now that you can no longer steal away my followers…or prevent me from stealing yours.’

The faeries of the Oak exchanged wary looks. ‘What do you mean?’ Rob asked.

‘Nothing but folly and empty threats.’ Garan spoke up, confident and calm. ‘As long as we hold the Stone of Naming, we can free her slaves as quickly as she can create them.’

‘The Stone?’ asked Jasmine. ‘You mean…this Stone?’

In a flash of light, the Empress materialised in the middle of the lawn. Her hand was outstretched, and in it lay a smooth white pebble.

‘It’s just illusion,’ said Linden fervently. ‘It has to be. Garan has the Stone, she’s only trying to trick us into showing her where it is…’

‘I know you believe you have the Stone in your keeping, Garan son of Gwylan,’ the Empress continued. ‘But if you look into the pouch at your belt you will find nothing but an ordinary pebble. Did you think yourself safe this afternoon, when you lay down to rest? You forgot that Bluebell had a key to every door in the Oak – and the power to beguile your mind so that you would not remember her taking the Stone from you.’

Bluebell…
Rhosmari clutched the twig beside her. All along they had thought Mallow was the traitor, the one most likely to hand them all over to the Empress. Could they really have been so deceived?

‘But how?’ asked Wink, hushed with disbelief. ‘How could Bluebell be helping the Empress? How would she even have met her? She’s never been out of the Oak!’

‘Yes, she has,’ said Campion heavily. ‘Remember those three days right after Queen Valerian was crowned, when we all thought Bluebell was hiding in her—’

But she never finished the sentence, for the Empress had lifted the Stone idly between finger and thumb, as though appraising it. ‘Such a small thing,’ she mused aloud. ‘I wonder how easily it will crumble?’ Then with sudden savagery she let it drop back into her palm, and closed her hand around it. Light flared between her fingers, and even from high up in the Oak, Rhosmari heard the terrible crack as the Stone shattered.

‘No!’ shouted Garan, leaping forward – but the moment his hand touched the Empress’s image, white lightning exploded through him. In horror Rhosmari watched him fall backwards, mouth open in a soundless cry. Then he crumpled to the grass, and the light around him faded as the Empress brushed the gravel from her hands.

Rhosmari’s legs folded beneath her. She did not even feel her knees hit the branch, or the loreseed fall from her hand. Someone caught it, and tried to help her up again, but she neither knew nor cared which of the faeries it was. Her world had narrowed to a dark tunnel, with the Empress at one end and herself at the other, and Garan lying dead between them.

Slow heat spread through her body, engulfing her like a boiling tide. Her muscles became steel, her heart a furnace. Rhosmari yanked the rope off her waist, twisted away from the hands that held her, and leaped over the edge of the branch.

Wings outspread, she dropped to a landing just outside the window of the Queen’s audience chamber. Valerian sat motionless on her throne, hands braced along its carved arms. The walls of the room were cracked and the air thick with dust, but she stared straight ahead, as though gripped by some dark vision that she alone could see.

‘Is it true?’ she asked, as Rhosmari climbed in. ‘Is he dead?’

‘Yes.’

The Queen closed her eyes. ‘Gardener tend you, Garan son of Gwylan,’ she whispered. ‘May you be planted in a place of rich soil and good water, never to be uprooted again.’

Rhosmari barely heard her. She pushed past a knot of sobbing Oakenfolk – the faeries who had stayed with the Queen to maintain the Oak’s wards, but who had proved no match for Jasmine’s power – and out into the passage, heading for the Spiral Stair.

Curtains draped the end of the corridor, blotting out all light from the landing beyond. Rhosmari swept them aside, took two determined steps – and reeled back, gripping the bannister as her foot skidded into empty air.

The Stair was
gone.

‘Rhosmari!’ called Linden’s voice behind her. ‘Wait!’ She plunged through the archway, and Rhosmari had to grab her arm to keep her from pitching right over into the void.

‘What—
Oh
,’ Linden gasped, staring down at the splintered wreckage far below. ‘Oh
no
.’

‘There’s nothing we can do about it now,’ said Rhosmari. She knew she sounded harsh, but she could not afford to let herself care. ‘What do you want?’ ‘Rob made a bargain with the Empress,’ Linden said.

‘A temporary truce, for one hour. So we can look after our wounded, and decide what we’re going to do.’

Only an hour. So little time – and yet it would be enough. It would have to be. ‘All right,’ said Rhosmari, her eyes on the shadowy hole where the Stair had once been. ‘You’ve told me. Now you can go back to the others.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Linden.

‘What I have to,’ Rhosmari said, and stepped off the edge into nothingness.

Her wings opened instinctively to slow her fall, catching the updraught and shaping it into flight. Rhosmari glided downwards, past the dangling walkways and shattered landings that were all that remained of the Stair, circling over the debris that littered the Oak’s ground floor until she found a place to land.

The dust was thick enough to choke her; she coughed until her eyes watered. Then, holding her sleeve across her face, she began picking her way through the wreckage towards the East Root corridor. In one of the storerooms, perhaps, she would find what she needed; or if not, she would have to make herself invisible again and search the garden…

‘Help!’ cried a muffled voice. ‘Someone help us!’

For a moment Rhosmari thought that the sound was coming from beneath her, and that a whole group of faeries lay trapped beneath the ruins of the Stair. But as she clambered over smashed treads and risers and ducked a fallen beam, she realised that the cries came from further ahead. She teetered her way towards them, stumbling as a panel rocked beneath her feet, and stopped at last before the kitchen door.

‘The Stair’s fallen down,’ she called to the faeries on the other side. ‘And there’s too much wood here for me to move. You’ll have to wait until the others can get you out.’

At first the only answers were groans. But then Holly spoke up, resolute: ‘We’ll be all right. Just send help as soon as you can.’

Rhosmari climbed over the last of the debris and dropped to the floor, wiping the dust from her hands. Beyond the archway the passage was clear, its root-braced ceiling and pebbled walls still intact. She conjured a glow-spell and set off towards the exit.

She had only gone a few paces before a male faery’s voice, rough with exhaustion, spoke to her from the shadows. ‘Rhosmari?’

‘Broch,’ she said blankly, as her light fell upon his face. ‘How did you get here?’

‘We came in through the hedge tunnel,’ he said. ‘Thorn showed me the way.’

‘But Thorn’s—’ Rhosmari started to say, but then the blunt-haired faery stepped up beside him, scowling.

‘I’m what?’ she demanded.

Rhosmari bit her lip, willing herself strong. She could not afford to let her composure break even for a moment, if she were to go through with her plan. ‘We thought you might be dead,’ she said.

‘Fair enough,’ said Thorn. ‘I probably would have been, if this one hadn’t shown up to heal me. Took a blow to the head that nearly cracked my skull.’

‘
Did
crack your skull,’ Broch said. He spoke with his usual dryness, but there was a wild look about his eyes, and he was gripping Thorn’s shoulder as though afraid to let go.

‘Yes. Well.’ Thorn cleared her throat. ‘Let’s not get into that. So where are you off to?’ She raised her brows at Rhosmari. ‘I thought you were supposed to be watching the battle?’

‘I—’ Rhosmari began, but then a door banged open at the far end of the corridor, and a beam of torchlight sliced the darkness.

‘Somebody!’ Timothy’s voice cracked with desperation. ‘Anybody! Please!’

Broch and Thorn glanced at each other, but Rhosmari did not hesitate. She pushed past the other faeries and ran to meet him.

‘Peri,’ Timothy panted as she caught up to him. He was clutching his side and wheezing; he must have scrambled through the pipe and sprinted down the tunnel as fast as he could go. ‘We need someone – to heal her. Right away.’

‘Knife?’ Thorn jogged up to them, her square face incredulous. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘She’s dying,’ Timothy gasped. ‘She’s lost so much blood, we’re afraid to move her…tried to call an ambulance but couldn’t get the phone to work – mobile’s no good either – must be the Empress…’

Thorn whipped around and grabbed Broch by the elbow. ‘We’ve got to get over there
now
.’

‘I am not a skilled healer,’ he protested, though she was already dragging him down the corridor. ‘And the house is surrounded by iron—’

‘Then you’ll just have to keep her alive until we can get the house
un-
surrounded,’ Thorn snapped back. ‘Because there is no way I’m going to stand here and let Knife die.’ She wrestled the bow and quiver off his shoulders, dropped her own weapons beside them, and pushed him into the secret tunnel. ‘Enough jabbering! Go!’

Timothy leaned heavily against the wall. ‘I’ve got to get back too,’ he said. ‘I just…have to catch my breath.’ Then he slid to the floor and dropped his head between his knees.

Rhosmari looked from him to the weapons, lying forgotten in the middle of the corridor. Broch’s would be too heavy, but Thorn’s should do well enough. She edged towards them, keeping an eye on Timothy all the while.

‘OK,’ said Timothy after a moment, struggling to his feet again. ‘I’m going back to the house.’ He turned to her, eyes pleading. ‘Come with me?’