Bones of Faerie03 - Faerie After (21 page)

“I’m—” But I still couldn’t say it. “I’m not sorry I
saved you. I’m sorry for what happened because of it, but I’m not sorry for that.”

“I know. I—” Allie shook her head. “I’ll see you soon, okay? Promise?”

I didn’t know what would happen when I went back to Faerie, when I tried to call Rhianne. “If I can. Promise.”

Allie brushed a hand across her eyes and walked to Nys’s side. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Wait for me with the rest of our people,” Karin told him. “I must speak with Liza and Matthew. Give us”—she tilted her head—“until the first light of dawn, if the crumbling allows it. Return for me then.”

Nys bowed his head. “As you wish, my liege.” He spoke the last word as if it tasted bad. He took Allie’s hand, and together they disappeared into the forest. I heard Nys’s steps, a whisper of movement against the damp earth, and Allie’s, no louder. Karin turned back to us as their steps faded. “Now, quickly. Tell me why you must return to the Realm, Liza.”

“And me.” Matthew sat cross-legged on the ground, and I sat beside him. Karin sat, too. I told them both, as quickly as I could, about Rhianne, and the crumbling, and how I had made the crumbling worse. More dawn birds joined the sparrow as I spoke, though the sky remained dark.

“So you see,” I said. “This is mine to fix, or die failing
to fix.” Matthew gave me a sharp look, but I pressed on. “I need to do everything I possibly can to call Rhianne out of the gray. To stop the crumbling before everything is lost.”

“The price of my people’s gifts.” Pain flashed like lightning in Karin’s eyes. “I did not know it was so high. I have learned, since the War, how much your people have suffered for those gifts, but I did not know all of it. This mistake did not begin with you, Liza. You are only one small part of something that started long before you were born.”

“But if I can do something about it—I already failed once, and that made things so much worse—I have to keep trying, don’t I?” This was too important not to.

“You are strong,” Karin said. “We both know this. Rhianne is stronger, strong enough that her tree survived the burning of my land when so much else was lost. I heard that land all too well, with my mother gone, where before I only heard the plants and their dying. That’s the reason my mind so swiftly slid from my grasp. I don’t remember much of what happened in the Realm. But I remember too well how deeply the land was injured and how much pain it yet feels. That the First Tree stands at all, damaged though it is, tells me that uprooting Rhianne will be no small task. And I fear
Rhianne will do all she can to destroy you, should you fail.”

A gray strip of sky was dawning across the River. Matthew’s arm pressed against mine, but I could not feel his fingers around my stone hand. I leaned against him, hoping it wasn’t my wanting making him draw near, because I needed him here so badly. I didn’t know if I could make Rhianne hear me, but I knew that if I did, and failed, I wasn’t likely to survive to try again. “But can it be done?” I pressed.

“I do not know. Perhaps. It is not impossible. But it is such a small chance.” More green shoots sprouted along the crack in the stone. Karin ran her fingers through them. “It is not right, that you pay the price for what my people have done. You do not deserve that.”

Almost, I believed her. “But none of us deserve all the things that happen to us, do we?” Both the good and the bad—we were better and worse than it all. “No one deserved the War,” I said.

“Just so.” Karin reached into her pocket and held something out: the last quia seed. “Take it,” she said, and I did. “Perhaps this will be more help to you than it was to me. The seeds were always meant for you. But I would stand beside you if I could.”

“You can’t. Not in Faerie.” I slid the seed into my
pocket. There was no knowing how long Karin’s mind would stay her own if she went back.

“No, I can’t,” Karin said. “And not only because madness would render me useless. I do not know how long your world will resist the crumbling after mine falls to it, but however long that may be, I cannot allow so many of my people to enter your world together, free to use their power as they will. I must have oaths from them—not to use glamour and not to harm your people with their other magics—before I let them go any farther.”

“But I can go with Liza.” Matthew turned to me. “I am going. You know that, don’t you?”

“No.” I drew my hand from his. He wasn’t a summoner. He couldn’t do anything against Rhianne, and if I fell, he’d have no way of leaving Faerie on his own. If I didn’t return, I needed to know that Matthew, at least, would be safe, for as long as this world held. “There’s nothing you can do, not this time. Go with Karin and Allie, Matthew. Please.”

Matthew was silent, as if thinking about that. At last he said quietly, “All right.”

I wrapped my arms around him, wanting to remember the feel of holding him, the scent of his hair and his skin and his sweat—everything. “Someone needs to go home,” I said. “To Mom and the others. To tell them what’s happened.”

“All right,” Matthew said again, his voice just the same: flat, expressionless. I saw the sleepy emptiness in his face, and I knew. This decision was not his own.

Karin raised her head. “Liza,” she said softly. “What are you doing?”

“Keeping him safe.” Shame heated my face—what was shame beside Matthew’s life? If I was going to sacrifice myself, I could at least save him, and he could hate me all he wanted afterward. I’d be gone.

“I see,” Karin said. She could hate me for this, too. It didn’t matter. I didn’t want anyone else dying for me.

Karin stood, and the green sprouts retreated beneath the stone. “You are changed, Liza. Allie, as well. I sensed it when I woke, but I believed it a matter that could wait. I was wrong. Are you aware that there is a part of me that wants nothing so dearly as to forbid you to return to my world? That even as we speak, that part would have you go back to your town, to live under whatever protection it can provide, for as long as it might hold?”

“I know that.” I stood, too, wishing, like Karin wished, that there was a better way.

“No. I do not think you do.” A dangerous edge crept into Karin’s voice. “Because if I wished to, I could stop you. Blind though I am, I have battle skill enough remaining to render you unable to walk. I could send you
home with Nys and Allie and Matthew, and you could not stop me. Shall I show you?”

There was no warning. Her leg swept forward, and mine buckled beneath me. I crashed into the stone, and Karin’s knee jabbed my stomach, throwing me onto my back, while Matthew watched through sleepy eyes. I threw my hands over my head, waiting for the next blow. I’d never feared Karin before.

The blow didn’t come. Karin stood and turned from me. I curled into a crouch, protecting my bruised stomach.

Karin looked toward the Arch, as if she could see something in its surface. “Humans have always been so fragile, so easily broken. I have always been more powerful than any of the humans I taught. But I have not used that power against them, not since the War ended. Kaylen is—was—not as powerful as me, but he had power enough, and he did the same. I do not know for certain how my people’s gifts have come to you, Liza, though I have some ideas. But I know well the temptations of power and the desire to use it against others for their own good. So now you know it, too. What will you do?”

Matthew blinked, as if only mildly puzzled by what he saw. “Shall I go now?” he asked. He would do anything I wanted. Anything.

“No.” The word came out low, and hoarse, and it
made my chest ache. I wanted so badly to keep him safe. “No, Matthew.” I let him go, feeling something fall slack between us as I stood. “It’s not up to me.”

Matthew shuddered back into himself, eyes focusing, breath speeding up. I smelled fear on him once more, and I turned away, ashamed. At the horizon, dawn was growing, streaking the sky pink, but the birds had fallen silent.

“Fragile things are precious, Liza.” Karin’s voice sounded very far away. “Never forget that. You can break a thing by holding it too close as easily as by casting it aside.”

“Well, I’ll try not to be
too
fragile.” Matthew laughed uneasily as he stood. I felt his arms wrap around me, and I knew this was one more thing I didn’t deserve. “I won’t leave you, Liza, not if I have a choice. Not like the last time you faced powerful magic. Maybe there’s something I can do. If not, at least I can watch. You need a watcher, someone focused on something other than the magic. I don’t want to survive this knowing I left you alone.”

I trembled in his hold. “I wish you would go.” It was all I could do to keep the glamour from my voice.

“I know you do,” Matthew said.

The murmuring River fell as silent as the birds had. I looked to the horizon, but the dawn light was gone,
replaced by the darkness of the crumbling, rolling over the water like black storm clouds shot through with faint silver threads. Karin made a low sound.

Allie came running through the forest. “Nys says we need to leave now.”

“Yes.” Karin stumbled, and Matthew pulled away to catch her. “The River—something’s tearing, letting the Realm and its crumbling through. I can hear the land—my dying land—I cannot stay here.” Karin reached for me, and I grabbed her hand. She drew me into a swift, fierce hug. “You do your teacher honor, too. Never doubt it. If we do not meet again here, perhaps we’ll meet beyond the gray. If you see Elianna—” She shook her head, dismissing whatever she’d meant to say.

Allie took her arm. The healer gave us both a thin smile, and then she and Karin headed into the forest.

Matthew took my hand, his fingers brushing the sensitive place where stone met skin. “Ready?” he asked, and some part of me was glad he would be with me after all. I smelled his fear still, but he reached out and took my face in his hands. “Just so you know,” he whispered. “This is me.” His eyes clear and focused, he leaned down and pressed his lips against mine. I pressed mine back, inhaling wolf and sweat and boy and, beneath it all, the staleness of the crumbling, growing stronger. I pulled away, knowing we had little time.

“Later,” Matthew whispered, like a promise: that there would be a later, and that in it, we would find a way to cope with glamour, just like we’d find a way to cope with everything else. I wasn’t sure I believed those things, so I let him believe for me, just as once I’d believed in spring for him. Holding his hand once more, I looked into the Arch.

Show me Faerie
. It took several heartbeats, but at last I saw—

Elin, pulling a struggling Tolven away from roots he clung to like a stubborn child and dragging him down a tunnel whose glowing stones flickered out, one by one—

Dust. Endless gray dust, turning standing stone and tree stumps to shadow—

I stepped into that dust, Matthew at my side.

Chapter 19

I
choked on the smell of dry, musty air. Cold air, so much colder than before. Elin and Tolven stared at us, breathing hard, gray ash dusting their shoulders and hair. It clearly hadn’t been easy for Elin to drag Tolven to the surface. Dust was everywhere, a gray haze that blocked the thin morning light. That light ended after only a couple dozen paces in any direction, giving way to icy darkness.

Rhianne’s tree remained, a few yards away, but the other stumps were gone, save for Tolven’s full-grown quia tree, whose bright green leaves cast the only true color here. Faint silver threads shone through the dark around us, casting an eerie glow over the air, as if Faerie itself were a magic that someone was trying to work.

Elin laughed. “Trust Liza to show up in time for the end of the world. Too bad we can’t join you, but we were just leaving.”

“Not leaving!” Tolven screeched. He ran sharp nails along his sleeves, but they couldn’t pierce the fabric. “The tree is green. I stay with the tree.”

Elin grabbed his arm. “You cannot stay here. No one can stay here.”

“
She
can.” Tolven tilted his head at me. “You carry green, too.” Something in his gaze slid into focus. He reached for the seed in my pocket, stopped himself. “Liza, yes?”