Grave Mistake Read online

  Hern lent us horses to ride alongside his hunting party, in return for three syllables of the true name of an Unseelie knight who was the rival of someone he fancied. I was beginning to learn that secrets and favors were the currency here, and absolutely nothing was given freely.

  "The concept of debt is abhorrent to the Fae," Cole explained when I mentioned this. "To leave a debt unpaid is to leave someone else with power over you, in a very literal sense. If Hern had given us the horses and Gwydion hadn't insisted on hashing out how he was paying for them before he accepted, he would have given Hern a blank check to hold over us later. He could have demanded anything, and Gwydion would have been compelled by the law to give it to him. That's why some Fae get so pissed off if you try to thank them or repay them."

  "Then what was with Gwydion saying Hern would have our gratitude earlier?" I asked.

  "It was a trick," Cole said with a shrug. "Hern made a standard offer of a favor, which only an idiot would accept, but it's the traditional overture. Gwydion tried to interpret Hern's offer as something Hern was doing for himself, not a favor that would incur open debt or a service that would require payment, since we would only coincidentally be benefiting from his efforts. He's probably spent too much time around humans. If Hern was stupid, he might have misunderstood it as a blank check and accepted. But considering it looks like Hern is the Queen's favored consort right now, he's probably not dumb, and the implication insulted him. Hern immediately clarified that he was offering a service, demanded a price he knew Gwydion wouldn't want to pay, and added a threat for good measure. If Gwydion had refused, as he was considering, Hern would have had cause to attack him for the insult."

  "God, fairies suck," I said, rubbing a hand over my face.

  "Amen," Ethan chimed in.

  The fairy mounts at least were exceedingly well behaved. They were a smoother ride than most cars I'd been in and required no direction from us, which was good, since only Ethan actually knew how to ride. Cole had never seen a horse up close and was slightly intimidated by the whole situation.

  We rode past the meadow of bell flowers again, and Hern's riders struck up a marching song, a great chorus of masculine voices so powerful and unified that they shook the trees and drowned out the chiming of the bells entirely. I couldn't tell you what they sang about, the words melted on the brain like butter in the mouth. But I knew it made my blood pump and my heart race with excitement, eager to run, to chase and be chased. To hunt and be hunted. It wasn't the gripping compulsion of many of the other influences I'd heard since I'd been here. It would have been easy to mistake the urge for my own. Which, I think, only made it more dangerous.

  We passed through the glade where we'd seen the Unicorn, and I saw Gwydion summoning the screen full of magical text again, scanning for signs of Gilfaethwy and only growing more frustrated as time went on. But Hern pressed forward with utter confidence and no hesitation, pausing only rarely to consult with the pack of excitable hounds that rambled around his horse's hooves, which would then take off in a multicolored cavalcade of excited barking in one direction or another, and Hern would steer the hunting party to follow them.

  Finally, at what seemed an arbitrary meadow among the trees, the hounds began to bay and howl, running around a point in the center of the meadow.

  Hern climbed down from his horse and bent to touch the grass thoughtfully. Gwydion scanned his magical screen, eyes darting frantically, but I could see he saw nothing.

  "I have found the quarry," Hern announced, straightening up.

  "How?" Gwydion demanded. "There's no magical trace of Gilfaethwy anywhere!"

  "Of course not," Hern replied. "I have not been following his trail for some time."

  Gwydion sputtered in outrage.

  "Your shadow is clever," Hern continued. "He put a little of his will on a common doe. It wandered about its business, laying an obvious false trail, while his own better hidden one took a more direct path. Wearing the shape of that same doe, he went to the gnomes and the earthen fae. As soon as I knew he had gone in that direction, I knew what he planned, and brought us here."

  "Where is here?" I asked, looking around at the unremarkable clearing.

  "He didn't have the staff," Gwydion put together. "And he couldn't linger here long enough to regain the power to teleport again. He's bargained with the gnomes to open him a doorway to the Dark Fields."

  "Just so," Hern agreed. "And likely paid a dear price for it. Fortunately, I knew of this place, and thus we have no reason to bargain with the earth folk for passage to their ancestral place."

  He whistled, and his hounds began to circle the center of the meadow again, running faster and faster until they were only a dappled blur and a high, reedy howl.

  When they could go no faster, they dispersed all at once, each dog sprinting off in another direction to burn off the momentum before returning to Hern, who greeted them with pats and treats from his saddlebag.

  Where they had been running, a hole had opened up in the earth.

  It was the darkest hole I'd ever seen, with the same bottomless void qualities as the emptiness behind the doors in the trial of the blue demon door.

  "The way is open to you," Hern declared. "Take your head start, and good hunting. I shall be after you in three days' time, and if your foolish prey remains in the magical realms, I doubt it will take me more than a day to capture him. If he goes to ground on Earth, it may take me three. So, I would suggest that you hurry."

  "Your assistance is appreciated," Gwydion said, tense. "And duly paid for."

  Hern nodded. "There is no debt. However…"

  Gwydion had taken a step towards the hole and paused as Hern spoke. Hern brought forward a fine silver sight hound, sleek and long of limb, with fine dark eyes.

  "I would be willing to lend you one of my hounds," he said. "She's smarter than most fae, swifter than light, and utterly relentless. She would have your shadow in her jaws by daybreak. All I would ask in return is one of your humans. The prickly little dark-haired one perhaps. He would make an excellent terrier."

  "No, thank you," I said before Gwydion could reply, not willing to risk it. "We have our own hound."

  I patted Ethan with a playful smile.

  "That's no hound," Hern replied, no trace of a smile on his face. "That's a wolf. It has no master, and any man foolish enough to try and train it would soon find their throat in its teeth. If you ask my wisdom, a beast like that is better left to the wild or put down."

  "I'm sorry," I said loudly, taking Ethan's hand and pulling him towards the hole. "I couldn't hear your unsolicited advice over how much I love my boyfriend! Bye!"

  Gwydion shook his head, but judging by the fact that the world hadn't come crashing down around my ears, refusing to acknowledge his 'freely given' advice was probably a good idea. He gestured me towards the hole and, seeing there was no ladder or steps, I shrugged and jumped.

  Darkness rushed past me, howling in my ears. Cool earth grazed my shoulders when I drifted too far to either side. After I'd been dropping for what seemed like forever (and beginning to worry that I'd messed up) there was a strange nausea-inducing flip in my stomach, and suddenly, I was falling in the other direction, head first.

  I scrambled to right myself, completely losing track of up and down, worried I was about to tumble back out of the same hole and into Hern's lap.

  Instead, I landed on my feet on hard, black earth.

  Ethan landed beside me, having fallen from nowhere and looking very confused. Cole followed, and a second later, Gwydion landed as well.

  Meanwhile, I was staring in shock at the terrain around us.

  To say it was mountainous was to do a disservice to mountains. There were jagged peaks, but they had little in common with the mountains of Earth, which were majestic eruptions of stone swathed in greenery and snow. These... upheavals of black soil felt like they had more in common with the churned-up dirt in the wake of extensive construction. And there was nothing green. No
dead tree or shriveled weed as far as the eyes could see. The land seemed blasted, burned, and run over by a rototiller. The sky was a sullen orange fading to an ugly red the color of torn up skin. I couldn't find the sun.

  "The Dark Fields," Gwydion introduced us before we could begin asking questions. "Home of the dwarves. Many of the Fae who live in or under the soil consider this to have been their ancestral home until, according to oral tradition and precisely no first-hand record or physical evidence, the furious industry of the deep dwelling dwarves scorched the surface clean of life and drove them all away. This is likely invention meant to distinguish them from the rest of the Court who, as I said before, lost all memory of our native realm so long ago that not even the Queens recall it."

  "Did it happen before they were crowned?" I asked.

  "Possibly."

  "So, the Queen's don't rule forever?"

  Gwydion gave me a strange look before he answered. "In theory. All Fae are immortal, but we are not True Immortals. True Immortals cannot truly be killed in any way. Regular Immortals simply require specific circumstances, and often find their way back to life eventually regardless. As you work your way up through the ranks of the court, the number of vulnerabilities we have becomes increasingly small. The royalty just below the reigning monarchs are invulnerable to almost everything except prophecies, Heroes, and each other. The reigning Queens and their fallen Kings were thought to be above even that, returning even after being slain by Heroes, or by each other. But the matter with Oberon and Morozko has left some wondering if perhaps the circumstances for killing a monarch were simply more specific than we believed. Which of course begs the question, if the monarchs are not eternal, how is a monarch made? There has never been any other Queens than Mab and Titania. No Kings but Morozko and Oberon. Not in living memory. But there are old stories that mention coronations and royal weddings. Even children. Which implies that things were not always as they are. And with the loss of the Kings, they may change again."

  I hadn't expected such an extensive answer and wasn't sure what to do with it, besides accept that Gwydion really liked the sound of his own voice.

  "So, what did Gil come here for?" Cole asked, kicking a rock, which skidded down the slope we stood on in a small cascade of ash and blackened dirt.

  "Considering that he seems to have come here deliberately, not just in a continued attempt to throw us off," Gwydion said, striding off along the slope, "I would assume he's here to see the dwarves. Which has put a very nasty idea into my head."

  "What's that?" I asked as we followed him.

  "My Artificer's Glass is dwarven made," Gwydion said grimly.

  That explained nothing to me, but as much as Gwydion liked hearing himself talk, he liked drama more. He didn't elaborate as we trudged across the burned land.

  "There should be a door near here," he said, peering at the rough slopes ahead.

  "Why did the tunnel drop us out here?" I asked. "I'm assuming the dwarves are all underground, right?"

  "Correct," Gwydion confirmed. "But no magic, save dwarven magic, works beneath the soil here. There's magic in the air. You can cast all you like above ground. But beneath the dirt, its snuffed out like a candle. The dwarves learned how to pump magic down from the surface, beat it into a solid shape, and craft magnificent tools and enchantments from it. It's said they invented the entire concept of enchanting. But no natural magic or wizardry will work in their halls."

  "That's worrisome," I muttered. Curiously, I reached out in search of anything dead I could use, but there was nothing within range. Everything that had died here had died so long ago that there was no trace left, not even bones. The planet itself was one big dead thing, and one I was pretty sure even Aethon didn't have enough power to raise.

  But soon we came to a nondescript stone door set into a crumbling, ash-covered hill. Gwydion knocked on it hard, then sat down in the dirt.

  "Take a seat," he advised. "It will be a while. They have to make their way up. These doors aren't used often."

  "Are you sure they heard?" I asked, sitting down.

  "Oh, certainly," Gwydion confirmed, leaning back against the hill and closing his eyes. "We're stomping around on their roof. They know we're here. The important thing is announcing ourselves as guests rather than intruders. Dwarven law isn't like Fae law, but I have a little grasp of it."

  So we waited. It felt strange, after all the rush and stress, to be waiting. It made me restless and itchy. Cole and Ethan looked anxious as well.

  I watched the sky, assuming it was sunset and would be night soon. But the colors didn't shift and the light didn't fade, which made me uneasy.

  "Can we afford to wait like this?" I asked. "We only have three days."

  "Less than that," Gwydion replied. "Time moves differently here than in Tir Na Nog. The dwarves mined the sun, you see. So it all holds still. Meanwhile, the relative time of the other realms rushes on without it. We've likely already lost half a day, in their time. Hern's offer of three days was a cruel joke. I am simply hoping the dwarves will have let us in before he arrives. Hern will try to charge straight down with all his hounds, and the dwarves will kill him or throw him out at the very least and possibly buy us some time."

  I stared at Gwydion as horror washed over me. Ethan and Cole were paying attention now as well.

  "Why didn't you say something about the time before?" I said, fighting the urge to shake him. "We can't just be sitting here! We need to do something!"

  I jumped to my feet, trying to find a way to pry the door open. Ethan just put his head down on his knees. Cole got up to help me with the door, though he moved slower.

  In his defense, Gwydion did at least look a little surprised by my distress.

  "I thought I had already explained that concepts like time don't work the same in the Other Lands," he said with a frown. "Did you not understand?"

  "Clearly, we did not," Cole answered for me. "We were under the apparently mistaken impression that we actually had a chance."

  Gwydion sighed and stood, pulling me gently away from the door. I strongly considered punching him for it, but something about his expression made me hesitate.

  "We still have a chance," he said, looking me in the eye. I hadn't realized how rarely he did that before now. "It's less time than we thought, but it's not a death sentence. And right now, our best option is just to be patient. There's nothing else we can do."

  I sat down again, running my hands through my hair as my head throbbed with a tension headache that had been building since before we'd even landed in Tir Na Nog.

  "This is my fault," I groaned. "I should never have tried to talk to the Queen. I shouldn't have stopped to pet the Unicorn. I shouldn't have distracted you so that Gil could escape in the first place. I should never have touched that stupid candle…"

  "That's rather presumptuous of you," Gwydion scoffed, which was not the reaction I'd expected. He sat down next to me while I waited for him to elaborate. "By which I mean, I believe you're rather inflating your own importance in these things. I'm fairly certain it all would have happened more or less the same regardless. I am reasonably certain our position would actually be worse if you had not amused the Queen. I was certainly in no position to bargain, and you did buy us time, which is no small feat and often all that really can be done. Hern would still have caught us even if we had not stopped for the Unicorn, and I believe without its influence you would not have been able to stand up to the Queen. As for Gil and the candle, well, those were both squarely my fault."

  "Me getting lost in your house and stumbling into one of your artifacts wasn't your fault," I protested.

  "I disagree," Gwydion said calmly. "I could have warned you about the dangers in my home. I could have led you to a comfortable place to wait and told you not to wander. I could have freed you from the door and then returned to my responsibilities. But, as with exposing you to the Candle, I chose not to, because I wanted to see what would happen. Which, while an understand
able reason to most fae, is a poor excuse where humans are concerned."

  "Gil said the same thing about Ethan's curse," I remembered. "He had to see what would happen."

  "It's a compulsion for the fae," Gwydion said with a shrug. "But not an undeniable one. I could have resisted the urge. That I did not is no one's fault but my own."

  "I could have resisted too," I pointed out. "I didn't have to take the Candle. I didn't have to wander off into your stupid house. I didn't have to accept your… offer, at dinner."

  "Then whatever blame you bear is diminished by the fact that you had no idea what you were doing, and I did."

  I huffed in frustration.

  "I definitely knew what I was doing at dinner," I said. "I knew no one was keeping an eye on Gil."

  "You assumed I wouldn't have left him if I wasn't certain he was secure," Gwydion said with a shrug. "And we were both rather frustrated and distracted, as I recall. If you were slightly naïve to believe I could be trusted, that's hardly a crime."

  "Why won't you just let this be my fault?" I asked, agitation rising. Gwydion pinned me with a curious look.

  "Why do you want it to be your fault?"

  I sat back down, having barely even realized I was halfway to my feet again.

  "I don't know," I said, scrubbing a hand through my hair again. I'd straightened it the morning we left my Aunt's house, however long ago that was now, but between the dunking at Distant Shore and all the running around, it was becoming thoroughly curly again, and stiff with salt water. "Control issues, probably."

  "You do seem to have those in spades."

  "Yeah, I'm starting to figure that out."

  He put a hand on my shoulder, the gesture a bit stiff, but I could tell he was trying to comfort me.

  "Why are you being nice to me?" I asked. Thinking back, the whole way through Tir Na Nog he'd been unusually considerate. For him anyway.

  "You did save my life," he pointed out. "In rather fantastic fashion."

  "Would you really have died though?" I pointed out. He shrugged.

  "Who's to say? Drowning is not typically one of the ways I can die. But Distant Shore is an odd place. Death rides closer to the surface. Immortality is a little more porous than usual. And I was very low on magic. I can be certain I would have been unconscious far longer than it would take the three of you to die of hunger or thirst. Or to become desperate enough to try and use the staff, thus tearing yourselves apart at the molecules. One way or the other, I would have ended up alone, drifting comatose, and to guess what might happen then, in a place like Distant Shore, can only be baseless speculation."