Keys and Curses (Shadow Book 2) (31 page)

Flower slowly dropped her hands from her eyes and watched the little beasts lift off the roses and beat a hasty retreat. One tried to go back the way they’d come, only to have a thorny branch snake out and wrap around its leg. A trickle of blood stained the stem. The fetch made a choking noise and dropped like a stone. Flower jumped out of the way of its descent, but it was quite dead.

“And stay out, you dreadful creatures!” the voice yelled.

Flower turned slowly to the source of the voice. At first she couldn’t say anything.

The man was taller than her by a few inches. He wore a lime green top hat and matching tailcoat. His hair was long and dark, except for a single, solid grey streak coming from one temple.

She fell to her knees with a cry of relief. “My king! You’re safe!”

“My dear girl, of course I’m safe. Do get up, you’re making my garden look untidy, all three of you.”

Flower hastily got to her feet. Her exhaustion had vanished, replaced only with elation. Finally, after all these years, she’d found King Pierus and he was safe. Under siege perhaps, but who wasn’t?”

“What are you doing here?” Pierus’s eyes flicked from her to her companions.

Flower glanced at them. Pinky hid behind Shazza, who glowered at the king but said nothing. “My king, we came seeking your help. Shadow is in peril and–” Flower broke off and glanced at the dead fetch at her feet. “Wait, did that rose kill this fetch?”

Pierus’s lips curved in a tolerant smile. “Yes of course. The roses kill anyone and anything who tries to leave. Except me, of course.”

“But why?”

“For my own protection, naturally. Come along, you’d better come in, since you were good enough to visit. You two as well.” Pierus put his arm around Flower’s shoulder and walked on through the roses.

“But-” Flower frowned, trying to understand. “Wouldn’t it be more effective protection if the roses killed anyone who tried to come in?”

“My dear girl, only the stupidest people ever come in here. Or the bravest. And all too often those two things are one and the same.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Clockwork’s words haunted Nikifor’s sleep. They dogged the morning’s march into the sunlight with the renegade band of fairies on their way to battle. He found it hard to pay attention when Fitz, Clockwork and Ishtar stopped at the edge of the open paddocks to argue over the best route into Quicksilver Forest; instead he stared at a ragged spider web stretched between a bare tree branch and a twig and wondered if Clockwork had seen something in him he couldn’t see for himself. Maybe Fitz was wrong to put so much trust in him. He’d screwed up for years and years. Vibe wasn’t that easy to walk away from. He’d never heard of a muse who’d survived it, except–except the king.

Nikifor went rigid. For a single endless moment he was back in that castle. The Tormentor held out a glass of bright green liquid. It was so close to him, he could smell it, he could taste it, he could already feel the intoxicating burn in his ribs. The Tormentor, the king, grabbed his hair, tipped his head back and poured the liquid down his throat.

Nikifor jerked out of the memory still choking. He gasped for air.

Fitz split off from the others and came over to slap him on the back. “Are you okay?”

Nikifor took a few deep breaths to make sure he was back to normal. “No, no I’m not. This is a disaster!”

Fitz’s hand over his mouth muffled both the final word and the volume of Nikifor’s voice. “We really need to get this curse lifted.”

Nikifor took another deep breath. “Thank you.” He rubbed his fingers nervously on the jeans he’d been wearing since leaving Dream. “I remembered something new.”

“Must have been serious.” Fitz had one eye on Ishtar and Clockwork, as though he would rather return to their increasingly animated discussion.

“The king forced me to drink vibe,” Nikifor said. “That’s how I got started.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“You don’t understand.” Nikifor pushed the hair out of his face and glanced across the grassy distance they had yet to cover. “Flower’s gone to find the king. She has no idea what he’s capable of. She’s in terrible danger, I have to go back for her!”

“No, Nikifor.” Fitz put a hand on his shoulder and fixed him with grave, stern eyes. “She made her choice and you made yours. There’s nothing you can do for her now, except–” he followed Nikifor’s gaze. “Free the Freakin Fairies. Cut off the king’s silver supply. The sooner the better. If you leave us now to go after her, we’ll lose this battle and chances are you won’t reach her in time anyway.”

“So we leave her to her fate? Is this what being part of the IA means?”

A flicker of regret, or perhaps pain, showed in the wrinkles around Fitz’s eyes. “You’re not abandoning her, friend,” he said. “You’re focussing on the bigger picture. This way you help everybody. You’re the Muse Champion. Shadow needs you.”

“Flower needs me too.” Nikifor strode to Ishtar and Clockwork, who were still arguing. He knew Fitz was right, but that didn’t make him any less angry about it. “What’s going on?”

“We need to go straight across there.” Clockwork pointed at the paddocks. “The sooner we reach the mines the better.”

“But if we go by the forest we’ll get there in one piece,” Ishtar said. “We’re already picking a fight, why make it easy for them to demolish us before we get there?”

“They’re just as likely to ambush us in the forest,” Clockwork shot back. “At least out there we can see what’s coming.”

“Enough.” Nikifor spoke through clenched teeth, something he wasn’t in the habit of doing, but it was quite obvious they’d be there all day arguing. “I’ll go across the paddocks. Anyone waiting for us will see me first. You go through the forest and meet me at the mine. Let’s not waste any more time.”

Clockwork and Ishtar stared at him like he’d grown a second head.

Ishtar opened her mouth to argue. Then she paused. “A decoy. Actually that’s a good plan.”

“I’m going with him,” Clockwork said.

“Please yourself.” Ishtar left to round up her fairies.

“I’m going to be moving very fast,” Nikifor said.

Clockwork met the challenge with a smirk. “I can keep up with any pace you set, Muse.”

Fitz gave them a lopsided grin. “I might be a little old for what you have in mind. I’ll go with the fairies.”

The anger smouldered away behind Nikifor’s ribs. He moved along the bank until he found a narrow, sandy descent, carved out long since by horse-ants, a species he was quite glad didn’t appear to still occupy the place. He scrambled down it without waiting to see if Clockwork would follow, lost his grip halfway down and slid the rest of the way on his heels.

Clockwork waited for him at the bottom, arms folded, one cheek dimpling. “Is this what you call moving? I’ve got a tarantula who could’ve got down there faster.”

Nikifor struck off into the paddocks without replying. They weren’t that far from where they’d encountered Shazza for the first time; a straight walk across the paddocks and they’d reach Quicksilver Forest within two or three hours. He settled into a ground-eating stride.

Clockwork kept up with a steady trot. “What’s your hurry, anyway?”

“Flower’s in trouble. I need to get this over with and go help her.” Nikifor kept his eyes on the distant patch of darker green that was their goal. So far, the skies were clear.

“How in Shadow do you expect to help someone so stupid she can’t even see past the end of her nose to realise her king’s out to kill her?”

The anger surged. Before he knew what he was doing Nikifor grabbed Clockwork around the neck. “Take that back!” he roared. “She’s my friend!” He stopped, looked stupidly at his hand and let Clockwork go. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He started walking again, this time slightly faster. The distant patch of dark green grew larger.

“No worries mate.” Clockwork rubbed his neck and kept up. “Nice to know you’re loyal to your friends. Hate to be your enemy. It’s just, you know, I don’t understand how she couldn’t know about the king. You obviously do.”

“I have no key,” Nikifor said in a low voice.

“So?”

“Up until I dropped my key into the ocean, and even for some time after, I too was convinced of my loyalty to the king. I believe he’s using her key to control her.”

Clockwork was silent for a long time. The sun shone, the flowers under their feet swayed in a gentle breeze. The occasional bee sailed past. The only other sound was their rapid footfalls. When he finally spoke again, Quicksilver Forest had grown to a spreading tree line far ahead. “What are you going to do?”

“Free your family. Cut off the silver supply to the king.”

“And then?”

“Maybe I should do what Hippy told me it was my destiny to do.” Nikifor scanned the skies and finally found what he’d been expecting: a distant patch of darkness. But it was so distant he couldn’t even be sure it was for them. “Maybe I’ll go kill the king.”

“No you won’t.”

“You don’t want the king dead?”

“Of course I do, and more power to you if you succeed, but you won’t. The pretender king had a vision of his death and both you and my daughter were in it. I hardly think she’s ready to join you just yet, mate. You’re going to have to wait for her.”

Nikifor was more disquieted by this than he wanted to admit. The patch of darkness in the sky had disappeared, but that was no comfort either. That just meant they’d attacked someone else. He hoped it wasn’t Flower and Mudface. The anger still coiled inside him, but it was no longer directed at Clockwork or Fitz or even the king.

It was directed at himself, for not being able to help when he was needed.

They crossed the rest of the green field in silence, focussing solely on speed. Nikifor didn’t like that they hadn’t encountered any opposition yet. Everything was too quiet, which meant either they were walking into something very messy, or the enemy was busy elsewhere.

Busy with Flower.

He pushed the thought away and strode, finally, into Quicksilver Forest. The shade of the trees cooled him. He hadn’t realised how hot it was out there.

Clockwork headed down a path marked by a lightning pictogram carved into a tree trunk.

“So what’s your hurry?” Nikifor asked, his voice hushed. He remembered coming along here with Flower as though it had been a dream. He’d been in a bad way.

“I don’t like leaving Hippy and Krysta for too long,” Clockwork replied. “And I was under the impression you’d noticed, but my entire clan is being held prisoner in their own mine. I’m not leaving them in there a second longer than necessary.”

Nikifor didn’t make any more attempts at conversation. He followed Clockwork along a series of paths he didn’t recognise at all, under tall trees, through dips in the road, once through an ankle deep stream that ran right across the track, and then under a passage of low-hanging ferns.

Clockwork stopped under a tree where a pictogram had been scratched off. He brushed his thumb over the wood.

“What’s that?” Nikifor remembered Flower being puzzled by something similar.

“It’s a warning.” Clockwork went to the next tree, where another lightning strike was etched in silver. “The only reason to scratch one of these off a tree would be if something was threatening the village. See this? This pictogram is fresh, but it’s on the wrong tree. Lightning markers only go on silver oaks, never on a fig. Someone was trying to post a warning. They must have known what was going to happen.” He hurried onward.

Nikifor didn’t really understand any of the intricacies of where to put a pictogram. That was definitely Flower’s domain. “Wouldn’t they have done something if they knew?”

“Of course they would. They would’ve fought for their mine. You’ve got to understand, the silver’s the most important thing to us. So they would’ve fought, and–” Clockwork stopped when the forest opened out into the same silent village Nikifor remembered. “–And they would’ve lost.”

They descended into the village. Clockwork quickened the pace to a steady jog and went straight through without as much as looking at any of the huts. Nikifor didn’t blame him. The place gave him the chills even more now than it had last time he’d been here.

They left the village and went down the rocky path to the mine. It was a dizzying feeling to be back where he’d started, only this time with a lot more of his faculties intact. The huge rock remained over the cave mouth, and in front of it slept a dozen fetches.

The pair crept closer under cover of the trees. Clockwork said a stream of very bad words under his breath the whole time, some of them words Nikifor had never even heard before. No wait, he’d heard Krysta use at least one when she was being attacked by vampires in her mother’s kitchen. It sounded very, very, rude.

Nikifor loosened the axe from its braces on his back. “I’ll get the fetches.” Without waiting for a reply he strode to the sleeping creatures and smashed the axe into the heads of the first three before the others even woke up. The fourth had time to flare its wings and hiss. Thud. Nikifor turned it to gas and knocked the next two into the rock. The seventh had time to fly at him before he kicked it in the face. He gagged when it exploded right in front of him. Eight and nine he smashed into the ground just as ten began to shriek. He cut that sound off with a blow to its neck, and dispatched eleven and twelve just as quickly.