The Boy with the Hidden Name (7 page)

instead of sharp and cold and exposed. And the Erlking did

not stop Ben when he could have, has not yet stopped us. I can

feel myself starting to trust him, even though it seems strange

that I should trust a goblin more than I should trust faeries.

The Erlking looks at me. “They’ll be safe as long as there

are goblins left to fight. If Goblinopolis should fall, then of

course I can guarantee no safety, as I shall be gone myself.”

He says it so calmly, so simply. I swallow the nervous pit in

my stomach and nod and realize that I have entirely lost my

appetite. It actually seems a betrayal of my family that I’d had any appetite at all to begin with.

“There’s something else,” Will says.

The Erlking arches an eyebrow at him. “You ask for my

army and my protection and you still seek more?”

“Benedict’s been tricked. Trapped.”

“Benedict Le Fay has been
tricked
?” repeats the Erlking.

“Pray tell, how does one trick a Le Fay?”

“Very cunningly,” Will responds. “We need him for the

prophecy, if we have any chance of winning this war, so we

need to find him.”

“You need a traveler? Really? That’s what you need to win?

In that case, I shall withdraw all of my armies as soon as you

retrieve him.”

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“You know that’s not how prophecies work, Kainen— ”

“Why are you here?” The Erlking’s voice is cold, and I

shiver with it. “I have no interest in helping you find a trav-

eler. I say good riddance to him.”

“You want the prophecy to be fulfilled as much as the

rest of us do. And we need Benedict to do it. And you can

find him, can’t you? The goblins have always been able to

hunt travelers.”

“Goblins hunt many things,” the Erlking replies. “That

doesn’t mean we can find things that don’t wish to be found.

If your traveler is any good, he will never be found. And if he

isn’t
any good, then the Seelies will have already gotten him, no?” The Erlking says this very casually.

I frown at him, because I am furious at Ben but I still don’t

like to hear people casually discussing his death.

The Erlking notices, turning his gaze onto me. “You

disagree?”

“He’s looking for his mother,” I say as if in his defense.

“His mother?” the Erlking echoes. “His mother was named

centuries ago. Or yesterday, depending on the time.” The

Erlking pats at his chest, where he replaced the pocket watch.

“Not according to the book. The book says she’s the only

who knows where the other fays are, and we need to find her

to get to them. This doesn’t have to do with Ben; this has to

do with everything else. I don’t care if we ever find Ben.”

The Erlking looks at me for a moment before arching one

of his dark brows wryly up. He looks as if he doesn’t believe

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me for a second, which is really irritating. Then he says,

“Well, if the book told Benedict that his mother is still alive, it must be a trap. It’s a book of power; the words in it could

be traps just as much as they could be truths. Lord Dexter

was on our side unless he wasn’t. You know how the saying

goes: never trust a faerie or a wizard or an ogre or a gnome.

Never trust anything except a goblin.”

“That’s not how the saying goes,” sighs Will.

“If Benedict’s mother were still alive, where is she? Why

would she have kept herself hidden for so long?”

“Because she had a price on her head,” Will says. “Because

she had to hide to survive.”

I look at him. “Hang on, I thought
you
thought this was a trap too.”

“It can be true and still be a trap,” Will replies. “But you’re

right— we don’t have any other option. If she’s the one who

hid the other fays, we need her. And if anyone could have

stayed hidden all this time, it would have been her. She was

the best enchantress in the Otherworld.”

“Her son isn’t so bad at it, from what I hear, and he couldn’t

get his hiding enchantment to hold up,” the Erlking points

out, tipping his head my way.

“Selkie’s enchantment was supposed to break,” Will says.

“Otherwise the prophecy would never have been fulfilled.”

“Then why not just wait until the rest of the enchant-

ments break?”

“Because we don’t have time, as you just pointed out.

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Because the clock is ticking, and we didn’t coordinate our

battle strategy with Benedict Le Fay’s hidden, named- or-

maybe- not- named mother, and because you know there

are other prophecies in motion that you do not want to

be fulfilled.”

There is a long tense moment. I feel like I can hear the

Erlking’s pocket watch tick forward another minute, but that

might just be my nervous imagination.

The Erlking finally says, “Where would she have been all

this time?”

It’s such an impossible question for me to contemplate. I

know almost nothing about the Otherworld, so I don’t even

know where to look. At least if you lose someone on planet

earth, you have a general idea of where the continents are, of

where that person might
be
. Yeah, he might be on the other side of the planet, but you could get in a plane and you could

start searching systematically, street by street, if you really

had to. I have to find a faerie who may or may not exist and I

don’t even know the
geography
. I might as well roam the earth asking every random person I encounter, “Do you think you

might be a faerie?” in order to find the other three fays.

The Erlking goes on, “Who would ever want to have been

caught harboring such a fugitive from the Seelies? The Seelies

will destroy you for no reason, never mind
this
. She would never have been able to shelter herself for so very long— ”

He cuts himself off, and I realize in that moment that he’s

had an idea, an idea he doesn’t want to share with us.

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“What?” I demand.

He swallows and looks at Will and then back to me and

admits reluctantly, “Unless she went to the Unseelie Court.”

“And who’s that?” Kelsey asks.

“The Seelie Court’s worse half,” Will explains, and I

remember Ben mentioning them before. “The only small

pocket of the Otherworld that’s not under Seelie control is

under Unseelie control, and they are even worse than the

Seelies, which is why the Seelies never conquered them.

They let them be because they couldn’t be bothered. If you

were hiding from Seelies, you’d hide there. But only if it

was your last resort. Because the Unseelies would betray you

back to the Seelies in a heartbeat. You can’t trust faeries as

a general rule, but the Unseelies have never even heard the

word ‘trust.’”

“That’s where Ben thought she was,” I note.

“If she’s anywhere,” agrees the Erlking.

“Well, whether or not she’s there, that’s undoubtedly where

Ben went to find her. We have to go to the Unseelie Court.”

The Erlking starts to laugh. He flings back his head in hilar-

ity, his laughter booming about us, echoing off the marble

walls of the dining room.

“Why is that funny?” I demand.

“The Unseelie Court is closed to visitors,” he says with a

smile. “How do you propose to get in?”

“How did Ben get in?” I counter. “How did his mother

get in?”

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“They’re travelers. They can get in anywhere. Like locked

rooms with books of power that no one is supposed to have

access to.” The Erlking gives Will a dark look, as if to remind

him that that is not forgiven, then he looks back at me. “
You
cannot just walk into the Unseelie Court.”

“That’s where I was hoping you might come in,” Will inserts.

The Erlking’s amusement fades. “Will,” he says and sighs.

“You’re the only one who can get us in,” Will tells him.

“I don’t disagree with
that
.” He sighs again and looks briefly to the ceiling. “All these years…True, there are constant battles with the encroaching humans, but mostly they have been

ages of peace and prosperity.”

“I can see that,” Will says. “I think of how you were when

you came to me, this ragtag little band of miners, and I see

what you’ve done with the place, and the truth is you’ve done

marvelously, Kainen, no one can deny that. But it won’t

work. You can’t keep them out of this one. The Seelies will

destroy everything this time if we don’t stop them. And your

armies won’t be enough. We need the other fays. And we

need a Le Fay.”

The Erlking regards him heavily for a moment and then

looks back to me. “I have heard rumors,” he begins, searching

my face. “The most fantastical rumors. Church bells in Tir na

nOg, I have been told. A silver bough, for the first time in

memory. Is it true? Did you escape from Tir na nOg?”

“Yes,” I answer firmly.

“And now you propose to march into the Unseelie Court?”

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“If that’s what we have to do to find the other fays,” I answer

again, stubbornly this time.

The Erlking’s eyes narrow slightly, studying my features

closely. “Aren’t you just
extraordinary
,” he murmurs.

“I’m just trying to fulfill my prophecy and save the world,”

I say. “All in a day’s work.”

The Erlking looks back to Will. “I thought there would be

so much more time before this moment,” he says sadly.

“We all did,” responds Will.

“Well.” The Erlking sighs and says solemnly, “You and I

rose together. If we are to fall, may we fall together too.” He

lifts his wine goblet toward Will.

Will leans over me and clinks his goblet against it firmly.

The sound is sharp and crystalline and chilling.

“What time is it?” I hear myself ask.

And the Erlking looks at his pocket watch and says, “11:11.”

“Make a wish,” says Kelsey softly.

I don’t. Instead I slip a butter knife off the table and into

my pocket. Seems more useful than most of the other things

I take.

x

The Erlking has horses, and they look almost exactly like

normal horses, except for the very important fact that they

don’t have any eyes. Where their eyes should be is just…

smooth skin.

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Kelsey and I stand there looking at them.

“Don’t say anything about how they don’t have eyes,” Will

warns us. “You’ll offend the Erlking.”

Kelsey and I look at him and then back to the horses. They

paw blindly at the ground with their hooves.

“They’re cave horses,” Safford explains helpfully. “I’ve heard

about these.”

“Why don’t they have eyes?” asks Kelsey.

“Because they don’t,” Safford answers.

“Ah, here he comes,” remarks Will, and I turn to look over

my shoulder.

We are standing outside the Erlking’s stables, and the

Erlking himself is walking toward us over the expanse of

enchanted grass that separates the stables from the palace.

His cape is billowing out behind him, and he is walking

swiftly, pulling on a pair of black leather gloves, his sword

swinging by his side. The little boy servant is skipping beside

him to keep up with his pace, holding a small bundle.

The Erlking does not look happy. He had sent us out

to the stables while he called his advisers together—
He’s a
king
, Will told us,
he
can’t just up and leave
— and I dis-cern the chat with his advisers might not have gone as well

as hoped.

“All set?” he asks, taking the reins of the horse that the

nearest servant leads to him. He speaks in clipped, brusque

tones, very different from the smooth, urbane charm he used

before. He looks at us briefly before taking the bundle out

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of the little boy’s hands. It is some sort of rucksack that he is fastening onto his saddle.

“Ready,” Will confirms and swings onto his cave horse.

Kelsey and I exchange a glance.

“We don’t ride horses,” I state.

The Erlking, settling atop his own horse, stares at me. “You

don’t ride horses?”

“They don’t ride horses much aboveground anymore,” Will

tells him apologetically.

“It is so uncivilized,” the Erlking complains. “Nobody has

any sense of propriety anymore.”

“Kelsey can ride with me,” Safford offers, his voice bright

with hope.

“Fine.” The Erlking waves one gloved hand dismissively.

“The fay can ride with me.” He turns to the servant next to

his horse. “Help her up.”

The servant, without warning, fastens his hands around my