Suddenly, the fifth sister hushed the others. “Shh. The
mahr
approaches,” Mina said.
* * *
Walking towards the blue-white light, Edwin rounded the
corner and the tunnel gave way to a huge moat in a cavern big enough to fit all
of Chardwick. The moat was so wide and deep that he was sure the Hosts must
have created it, and his jaw dropped when he looked over the edge and saw bug-sized
miners moving rock at the bottom. This must be the rock they carted up to
Newick, the rock Lady Nemain had said fueled the Shades’ powers. On the ledge,
a good distance away from where he stood, a lone bridge connected the manmade
tunnels to whatever lay across the moat.
The rock on the other side of the moat was uneven and
craggy, and littered with a small army of strange man-shaped piles of earth and
mud. A massive field of yellow flowers covered the craggy ground, all leaning
inland towards the blue-white light, like trees leaning towards the sun.
Past the odd field was the strangest forest he had ever seen.
The trees’ limbs were gnarled and sparsely covered with strange incandescent leaves,
and beyond this forest, somewhere Edwin couldn’t see, was the source of the
white-light. As though to answer a question just forming at the tip of his mind,
he heard a distant scream. Looking down the moat again, he saw a puddle of molten
rock oozing out of a hole a miner cut into the other side of the rock. The Hosts’
creation had an interior like a blacksmith’s forge, and Edwin now noticed
similar pockmarks littered throughout the moat. The land beyond the moat was
some sort of defense, and there was only one path to the Host’s Tomb. He
wondered if this enchanted cavern explained the hot spring under Master Carrion’s
greenhouse… but he shook away the thought. That wasn’t important now.
A woman spoke behind him and made him jump, and being so
close to the ledge, he struggled to regain his balance.
“What were they thinking digging into the forbidden rock?”
she asked a man walking next to her. “I know we’re behind schedule getting that
cart up to Newick, but we can’t afford to be careless with everything that’s
happened this season. These are the darkest times I’ve ever seen.”
“Newick is draining the magic from these stones faster than
ever,” the man said. “You know what pressure the Lucent is under to—” The
pair rounded the corner, saw Edwin, and froze.
The woman spoke first: “Boy, what are you doing here?
Apprentices aren’t allowed in this area.”
Edwin turned to run, and behind him he heard the woman cry,
“It’s him, the boy, the Other, the one who escaped! Hurry! The boy, he’s here!”
There was no way back the way he had come, so he followed
the ledge towards the bridge to the other side of the moat, the woman’s
footsteps echoing behind him. “Stop! Someone get him! The boy’s here!”
In the distance two miners appeared from a tunnel with
pick-axes. Seeing Edwin and the pair behind him, they ran towards the bridge to
block his way.
“Need any help?” the spirit hummed in his ear.
“Yes! You came!” Edwin exclaimed. He’d never been so glad to
see the spirit in his life.
“I couldn’t just let you die,” the spirit said. “And look at
the mess you’ve gotten yoursself in. You need me.”
Not wasting a moment, he called the creature into him, and it
disappeared from sight in an instant. Barreling towards the bridge, he leapt
over the two miners blocking his way with ease. They ran behind him on the
narrow little bridge, but with Edwin and the spirit joined they didn’t stand a
chance of catching him.
“The boy! Everyone, the boy!” the men yelled, and a loud
bell chimed in the distance. When Edwin glanced over his shoulder, he saw that
the ledge was filling with miners, all moving towards the bridge.
Edwin was almost across the bridge when he heard someone
call on the Fury, but he never stopped running, not even when he found himself
knee-deep in flowers. They made little cooing noises and moved over to clear a
path for him. Closer to the man-shaped piles of earth, each as big as a small
house, he saw they had crude eyes and mouths filled with some kind of
parchment. When he finally took a moment to look back, he saw that the miners
had stopped at the bridge, the closest mere inches from the flowers; they formed
a human wall that stretched back over the bridge, onto the ledge, and into the
tunnels.
Since they had stopped following, Edwin stopped running, but
he continued backing away from the bridge towards the strange underground
forest, all the while conscious of the sound of the shuffling flowers at his
feet. There was movement within the wall of miners, and he saw someone
maneuvering forward with surprising speed.
A minute later, as the person neared the bridge, Edwin saw
that it was Lady Nemain dressed in a green silk dress unfit for the mines. “We’ve
been preparing for you, Edwin!” she yelled across the bridge. “I’ve been
watching the mines, and the Lucent and his horn guard the village. You have
nowhere to run!” When Edwin kept backing away, she added, “Come back across the
bridge. There’s no reason you can’t die a noble death under the Great Tree.”
When Edwin again didn’t respond, Lady Nemain paused and
looked at the crowd gathered around her, and she looked sad when she lifted the
horn and blew. Its call was swift, and a moment later the air was filled with
shovels, axes, rocks, lunch pails, and anything else the miners had been
carrying. They flew high over the moat, a feat made possible only by the horn.
The closest of the miners swarmed around Lady Nemain, across the moat, and off
the bridge.
Lightning fast the flowers struck, jumping from the ground
bearing a mouthful of little fangs, latching onto every miner who dared cross. As
they bore their way through the miners’ clothes, the air filled with their
screams. At the same time, fire blazed in each mound of earth, but everything
the miners had thrown was falling now, making a sound like rain as it all hit
the ground. There was too much—Edwin sidestepped the first few pieces,
but he didn’t see a flying pickaxe that had been hiding behind a shovel. With a
hard thwamp, the pickaxe hit him in the chest and took his breath away.
“Ahhh!” Edwin cried as he pulled the pickaxe from his flesh.
Around him tools were everywhere; many had crashed into the flowers
and mounds of earth, and the cavern quaked under the earth-creatures’ angry feet.
The dead flowers melted into green puddles that flowed into the bodies of the
living. While Edwin tried to hold back the flow of blood from the hole in his
chest, he watched the living flowers squirt the green liquid across the moat
through their little fanged mouths, and was horrified when the liquid began
eating through the miners’ flesh. Even spellbound by the Fury, anyone hit
writhed and screamed on the ground, and those closest to the moat fell over. At
the bridge, the flowers were joined by a lumbering pile of earth. The miners
swatted at the earth-creature with whatever tools they had, but it was like
trying to fight a tornado with a fan. Eyes blazing, the earth-creature crushed
every miner it reached. Lady Nemain blew on her horn again, and the miners immediately
began retreating.
“You’ll never leave this place, Edwin. Your golems and venom
flowers won’t stop us forever, and we have you surrounded,” she yelled across
the moat.
Continuing to back away with his hand on his chest, Edwin
stumbled, and when he looked down, he saw he had tripped over a bone. When he
saw a human skull nearby, he realized that at some point in the past the
villagers had tried to cross into this land but hadn’t gotten far.
“Now what?” he asked the spirit. He could feel its anger
welling inside him. Blood was pouring from his chest quickly, and he worried
that soon not even the spirit’s strength would be able to keep him from feeling
its loss. Looking behind him at the strange forest and its gnarled trees, he
was close enough now to see that the trees had faces carved onto their
trunks—sad faces that seemed to beckon him to them, but he knew he’d
never make it.
Breathing heavily, he stopped and sat down in a bed of the
strange yellow flowers, and he wondered how he had gone from being safe in the
Morriseys’ house to being down in the mines so quickly. The flowers were
leaning towards him with their vicious little mouths and yellow teeth, and as
they cooed and leaned in towards him, he felt strangely comforted. There was another
world down here in the mines relying on the strange white light in the forest
for life.
With a great wince, Edwin dug in his sack a moment and
pulled out his book. Jerking it open, he said, “Herald. Herald! Wake up! I need
you.”
The book yawned and opened a crack. “You again? It’s not
much brighter here, you know. A strange light… Ah, interesting.” Its voice
perked up a bit. “Home at last, I see. Good for you.”
His head was spinning. “Herald… I’m hurt… I’m bleeding
badly… Can you help?”
“Help a traitor? I think not.”
“Herald, it’s bad. Please, no games.”
“Hmm… Manipulate the body? No, you’re not ready for healing
incantations.” The book considered a moment. “Maybe after a few
transformations, maybe a gramarye or two, and you’ll be ready to give it a go,
but definitely not now. Now you would do yourself more harm than good.”
Breathing was difficult. “There’s no time, Herald! What can
you tell me that can help
now
?”
The book grumbled. “Giving me orders, are you? Impertinent
little—”
“Herald!” Edwin yelled.
With a humph, the book said, “Look up,” and then closed
itself.
Knowing better than to try to reawaken it, he carefully
placed Herald back in his sack and sat it next to him. Then, using energy he
wasn’t even sure he had, he called forth a small ball of light, cast it into
the air, and heard a gasp across the moat; it was the first time anyone from
Chardwick had seen him perform magic. As the light floated upwards and neared
the roof of the cavern, it lit the dark crevices of the ceiling, and he saw the
light reflected in the beady eyes of dozens of unhappy bats.
White haired bats. The Golden Elixir
, he remembered
from one of Carrion’s lessons.
The ceiling was much too far away for him to catch one, but
the spirit could get there. He knew that would mean that he would have to
release it, and he felt his spirit urging him not to say the words.
“I have no choice,” Edwin said aloud. “I’ll die if I don’t
stop bleeding soon. Remember what Carrion said: They’ll come to a whistling
noise. I know you’ll take care of me. You always do.”
Between gritted teeth, he said the words that would release
the spirit, and without its strength he found he didn’t even have the energy to
keep his eyes open.
* * *
Edwin woke to the sound of chirping birds. At first his eyelids
wouldn’t move, but with a little effort he was able to crack one open, for a
moment. The morning light assaulted his senses, and he slowly became aware of
the worst headache he had ever had in his life.
“Ugggh,” he moaned, wanting to go back to sleep.
Sleep came easily. When he opened his eyes again, the sun
was higher in the sky and a warm midday breeze caressed his face. His head
still ached, but he made himself sit up. Groaning, he asked, “Wha… what
happened? How did we get here?”
“The imp,” the spirit hissed. “It came for us.”
“The imp was here!” he exclaimed. “What happened to Walt?”
“I didn’t sense the other boy.”
“Oh…” Then he remembered his chest, and his hand went for
his shirt. His shirt had a hole, but his chest was fine. There wasn’t even a
scar. “And… and the bats? I’m not bleeding.”
“Hmm,” the spirit purred, “that was even stranger. A bat
came to you and sacrificed itself. It came from the ceiling. It died giving you
the Elixir.”
Another death. Reading his mind, the spirit’s essence
flickered red, and Edwin noticed that the spirit really was getting big. No
longer transparent, its essence was as full as it had ever been. “I’m thirsty.
Where are we?” Edwin asked.
“The woods on the ledge,” the spirit hissed. “We came up
through a cavern beneath the Black Keep.”
His knapsack was lying next to him. He had lost everything
but Herald and his cloak, and he imagined he had the spirit to thank for that.
Holding it close, he rose unsteadily to his feet.
“Careful,” the spirit said.
“I’m really thirsty,” he said again. He looked at the
pockets of snow lying in shadows under trees, but thought better of eating any.
It had been weeks since the last snowstorm, and at this point the snow was
every color but white. “We can’t be too far from the inn.”
As he walked he couldn’t stop himself from playing with the
hole in his shirt. He couldn’t understand why the imp would help him.
“Do you think the Medgards heard about the signs and the
Umbrage Box?”
“Yess,” the spirit said simply.
“But sometimes news travels slowly up the pass,” Edwin said hopefully.
“Not when the news is important,” the spirit said. Edwin
knew it was right.
It was a quick walk through the forest, and when he got near
the clearing that opened onto the inn, he decided to call the spirit into him
as a precaution, even if he didn’t trust it around the Medgards. Its essence
made him feel a little better, but he still approached the inn tepidly.
Holding a basket of laundry, Anne Medgard rounded the corner
of the inn. Edwin knew she must be beginning her daily chores, and he saw her
before she saw him. She looked up, and it took her a moment to realize whom she
was seeing. “Edwin?” The way she said it was almost kind and maternal, the way
a real mother would react.
The moment didn’t last. She dropped her basket and screamed
“Willem! Willem!” as she ran in the other direction. On the other side of the
inn, he heard her yell, “Willem, it’s Edwin. He’s here!”