Winds rake over the mountains, sinking into the valley with an eerie whistling sound. The late-afternoon sun shines off Oak’s golden
hair, almost as bright as the snow.
Thick cloaks hang heavily over our backs. Titch huddles in the cowl at the prince’s neck, occasionally peering out to scowl at me.
Snow is seldom still. It swirls and blinds. It clings to everything, glimmering and glittering, and when a gust comes, it turns into a white fog.
And it stings. First like needles, then like razors. Tiny particles of ice chafe the cheeks, and even when they settle, they hide pitfalls. I take too heavy a step and plunge down, one of my legs sinking deep and the other thigh bending painfully on the ice shelf.
Oak leans down to give me his hand, then hauls me up. “My lady,” he says, as though handing me into a carriage. I feel the pressure of his fingers through both our gloves.
“I’m fine,” I tell him.
“Of course you are,” he agrees.
I resume walking, ignoring a slight limp.
The Stone Forest looms in front of us, perhaps twenty miles off and stretching far enough in both directions that it is hard to see how we could get around it. Tall pine trees, their bark all of silvery gray. They grow out of the snow-covered plain, rising up like a vast wall.
As we move along, we come to a stake in the ground, on which a troll’s head has been mounted. The wooden shaft lists to one side, as though from the force of the wind, and the entire top is black with dried fluid. The troll’s
eyes are open, staring into nothing with cloudy, fogged-over irises. Its lashes are white with frost.
Written on the stake are the words: My blood was spilled for the glory of the Kings of Stone who rule from beneath the world, but my body belongs to the Queen of Snow.
I stare at the head, the rough-cut flesh at the neck and the splinter of bone visible just beneath. Then I look ahead into the snow-covered expanse, dotted with curiously similar shapes. Now that I know they are not fallen branches or slender trees, I see there are a half dozen at least, with a grouping of three in one spot and the others spread out.
As I am wondering what they mean, the thing opens its mouth and speaks.
“In the name of our queen,” it creaks out in a whispery, horrible voice, “welcome.”
I step back in surprise, slip, and land on my ass. As I scramble to get up, Tiernan draws his sword and slices the head in two. Half the skull falls into the snow, scattering frozen clumps of blood large enough to look like rubies.
The thing’s lips still move, though, bidding us welcome again and again.
Oak raises his eyebrows. “I think we ought to assume that our presence is no longer secret.”
Tiernan looks out at the half dozen similar shapes. He nods once, wipes his sword against his pants, and sheathes it again. “It’s not far to the cave. There will be furs waiting for us and wood for a fire. We can plan from there.”
“When did you provision all of that?” I ask.
“When I came here for Hyacinthe,” Tiernan says. “Although we weren’t the first to use it. There were already some old supplies, from the time when the Court of Teeth and Madoc’s falcons made camp nearby.”
As we trudge on, I consider Tiernan’s answer.
I hadn’t really thought about the timing of Hyacinthe’s abduction before. I’d known that he was in Elfhame for long enough to try to murder Cardan and get put in the bridle. That had to have predated Madoc being kidnapped.
But Hyacinthe being in Elfhame when the general was taken seems odd, coincidental. Had he helped Lady Nore? Had he known it would happen and said nothing? Has Tiernan more reason to feel betrayed than I knew?
The third head we pass is one of the Gentry. His eyes are black drops, his skin bleached by blood loss. The same message about the Kings of Stone that was on the troll’s stake is written on this one.
Oak reaches out to touch the frozen cheek of the faerie. He closes the eyes.
“Did you know him?” I ask.
He hesitates. “He was a general. Lihorn. One of the cursed falcons. He used to come to my father’s house when I was young, to drink and talk strategy.”
Mercifully, this head does not speak.
Oak shivers beneath his cloak. Tiernan is doing little better. The heavy wool of their wrappings offers them some protection from the freezing temperatures, but not enough.
The sun turns the ice scarlet and gold as we begin making our way up the side of a mountain. It’s a craggy climb. We heave ourselves over rocks, trying not to slip. I find it hard going, difficult enough that I am silent with concentration. Oak clambers behind me, his hooves slippery on the ice. Tiernan’s training keeps his steps light, but his labored breathing gives away the effort of it. The air grows colder the darker the sky becomes. Oak’s breath steams as Tiernan shivers. The cold burns through the fabric of their gloves to stiffen their fingers, making them clumsy. I am unaffected, except perhaps a bit more alive, a bit more awake.
Gusts of wind whip sharp needles of ice against our cheeks. We edge along, barely able to see the path forward among the scrubby trees, rocky outcrops, and icicles.
The thought comes to me, unbidden, that I am looking at what I was made from. Snow and sticks. Sticks and snow. Not a real girl. A paper doll of a child, to play with, then rip up and throw away.
I was meant for the purpose of betraying the High Court. Never to survive past that. If I am the cause of Lady Nore’s fall, it will give me all the more pleasure for her never having anticipated it.
The cave entrance is wide and low, its ceiling a pocked sheet of ice. I duck my head as I enter. The owl-faced hob darts from the prince’s cowl,
flying into the darkness.
Oak digs out a stub of candle from his bag. He places four around the room and lights them. Their leaping flames send shadows in every direction.
A confusion of supplies is piled in the back: shaggy bear pelts, boxes, a small chest, and stacks of wood that have been here long enough to be covered in a thin layer of frost.
“Interesting stuff,” Oak says, walking over to the chest and knocking the side lightly with his hoof. “Did you open any of it when last you were here?”
Tiernan shakes his head. “I was in a bit of a rush.”
He would have been with Hyacinthe—still a bird, before Oak removed the curse. Had he been caught then, caged? Had he ridden on Tiernan’s shoulder, sure he was being saved? Or had he gone, knowing he would help Lady Nore abduct Madoc? I frown over that, since I recall him telling me how loyal he’d been.
Oak is peering at the lock on the chest. “Once, the Bomb told me a story about poisonous spiders kept inside a trunk. When the thief opened it, he was bitten all over. Died badly. I believe she was trying to dissuade me from stealing sweets.”
Tiernan kicks the stack of wood with one snow-covered boot. The logs tumble out of formation. “I am going to make a fire.”
I lift a fur and turn it inside out, brushing my hand over the lining to check for rot or bugs. There’s nothing. No discoloration, either, as there might be from poison. The only odor it contains is the faint smell of the smoke used to tan the hide.
A few uniforms from the long-disbanded army are in a gray woolen heap. I shake them out and assess them while Oak tries to pry apart the rusty chest. “There probably aren’t any spiders,” he says when I look in his direction.
Inside is a waxed wheel of cheese and ancient rolls, along with a skin of slushy wine. He appears disappointed.
Again, I find myself studying his face. The curve of his smiling mouth and the hard line of his jaw. What he wants me to see and what he wants to hide. After a moment, I turn away, heading to the front of the cave, where
Tiernan is striking an ancient flint against the side of his sword, hoping to get a spark.
I wonder how much it bothers him to be back here, alone.
“How long were you with Hyacinthe?” I ask, pulling out my twicesoaked matchbook and handing it over, though it might be useless.
Tiernan sighs. “We met the summer before King Eldred abdicated, at a late-night revel—not a Court one, the informal kind. I was still hoping to be chosen for a knight.”
I frown, not sure what he means. “Aren’t you a knight?”
Tiernan grins, as amused as I’ve ever seen him. “Me? No. I was trained for it but never got the chance.”
I glance at Oak, more confused than ever. I don’t know a lot about the process, but I was fairly sure it involved some member of a royal family tapping you on the shoulder with a sword. Surely, this mission alone was cause for that.
“I joined the Court of Shadows,” he says, answering the question I don’t ask.
“You’re a spy?” I think my mouth might be hanging open.
“Who else would my sister choose for a guard?” Oak interjects from the back. “She has a great fondness for spies who wanted to be knights, since she was one herself.”
“I wasn’t then, though. I was young and hopeful and a little drunk.” He smiles at the memory. “Hyacinthe was standing half in shadow, and he asked me if I knew anything about prophecies. I think he was very drunk.
“We got lost together in a hedge maze and spoke of the great deeds we planned on doing, like the knights of old. I thought his quest for revenge was impossibly romantic.” His mouth twists, as though it hurts for him to remember that version of himself, or a Hyacinthe who hadn’t yet chosen vengeance over him.
The fire catches.
“And here you are, doing great deeds,” I say.
He half smiles. “Sometimes life gives us the terrible gift of our own wishes come true.”
Oak has peeled the wax from the cheese in the chest. He sits beside us, chewing a piece of it and grimacing.
“It’s aged,” the prince says, as though that might be cause to recommend it despite the taste.
I rifle through his bag for a granola bar and eat that instead. “Tell her the rest,” Oak says.
At Tiernan’s frown, the prince grins. “Yes, I’ve heard the tale before.
Many times. But Wren has not.”
“What Oak wants me to tell you, I suppose, is that Hyacinthe and I spent the better part of two years together, before he left with Madoc’s army. We made the sorts of promises lovers make.” There’s a stiffness to his speech. Tiernan seems to be the sort of person who, the more deeply he feels a thing, the harder it is for him to talk about—although apparently he’s told plenty to Oak. “But when Hyacinthe wanted me to commit treason with him, I couldn’t.
“His revenge ought to be done, I thought. Prince Dain was dead. The High King did seem a bit of a fop, but no worse than Eldred. He disagreed. We had a big row, Sin declared me a coward, and I didn’t see him for another year.”
Sin? I force myself not to grin at the nickname he’d managed to keep quiet until now.
“Yeah, when he came back to kill you,” Oak says, then turns to me. “Hyacinthe would have been traveling with the Court of Teeth, like the rest of Madoc’s army. And would have fought in the Battle of the Serpent. Against Tiernan.”
“We didn’t see each other,” Tiernan clarifies. “No less fight. Not until after.”
I think about myself, under Oak’s bed. I wonder if that’s what he’s thinking about, too.
Tiernan goes on. “In the prisons. I was part of the Court of Shadows by then, and they let me visit him. We talked, and I thought—well, I didn’t know what would happen, or whether there would be any mercy, but I promised that if he was going to be put to death, I would save him. Even if it meant betraying Elfhame after all.
“In the end, though, all he had to do was repent. And he wouldn’t so much as do that.” Tiernan puts his head in his hands.
“He was proud,” Oak says. “And angry.”
“Was I supposed to be less proud?” Tiernan demands.
Oak turns to me. “So here’s where falcon Hyacinthe goes to Tiernan, who could have fed him and in a year had him back, but . . .”
He refused him.
“I regretted it,” Tiernan said. “So, when I heard he’d gone to the Citadel, I came here and retrieved Hyacinthe. Brought him to Elfhame. Persuaded Oak to break his curse. Whereupon I got my thanks when he tried to kill the High King.”
“No good deed goes unpunished, isn’t that what they say?” Oak breaks off another piece of the horrible cheese and attempts to spear it onto something to melt over the fire.
“He worried about you,” I tell Tiernan. “Hyacinthe, I mean.” He looks over warily. “In what way?”
“He believes you’ve been ensorcelled by Oak.” Tiernan sniffs, annoyed.
Oak laughs, but it sounds more forced than delighted. After a moment, he speaks again. “You know, until this trip, I thought I liked the cold. One can dress extravagantly when there’s no risk of sweating— brocades, gold trims, hats. But I am reevaluating.”
I can tell that Tiernan is grateful to have the attention off him. Oak’s silly words, his smile, all dare me to play along.
I roll my eyes.
He grins. “You have an understated elegance, so no need to worry about weather.”
When it is time to sleep, Tiernan and Oak wrap themselves in bearskins. Oak drapes one over my shoulders. I say nothing to indicate that I don’t need it, that I am never too cold. When we lie down by the fire, he watches me. The light dances in his eyes.
“Come here,” he says, beckoning with a hand.
I am not sure I know the me who moves, who shifts so that I am resting my head against his shoulder. The me who feels his breath against my hair and the pressure of his splayed fingers at the small of my back. His feet tangle with mine, my toes brushing against the fur just above his hooves. My fingers are resting against his stomach, and I cannot help feeling the hard planes of him, the muscles and the scars. When I move my hand, his breath catches.
We both go still. Tiernan, close to the fire, turns in his sleep.
In the firelight, the prince’s amber eyes are molten gold.
I am aware of my skin in a way I have never been before, of the slight movements of my limbs, of the rise and fall of my chest. I can hear the beat of his heart against my cheek. I feel as though I am shouting kiss me with every restless shift of my body. But his does not, and I am too much of a coward to do more than lie there and yearn until my eyes drift closed at last.
 |
When I wake in the afternoon, it is to Tiernan dragging in the body of a deer. He butchers it quickly, and he and I eat charred venison for breakfast.
Oak washes the heart clean of blood and puts it into the reliquary while still warm. Once it’s secured, the prince fiddles with the lock, setting it carefully shut and adjusting something inside to keep it that way.
Then we set off again, the prince and Tiernan wrapping bear fur over their cloaks for greater warmth. The Stone Forest is ahead of us, light shining off the trees where ice encases their branches.
“We can’t go in there,” I say. “The trolls must be working with Lady Nore.”
“Given what we saw yesterday, I must admit you were right to suggest we circle around this stretch of woods,” Oak says, staring into the trees and frowning.
Tiernan gives a half smile. “I congratulate you on this wise decision.”
We veer off to the east, skirting the edge of the forest. Even from this distance, it appears remarkable. Trees of ice grow blue fruits the size of peaches, encased in a frozen crust. Some have fallen and split open like candy apples. Their scent is that of honey and spice and sap. The leaves of the trees give off a haunting sound not unlike wind chimes when the air blows through the branches.
The longer we walk, the more we realize we cannot get away from the Stone Forest. Sometimes it seems as though the woods itself moves. Twice, I looked up and found myself surrounded by trees. The drag of the magic reminds me of the undertow on a beach: a strip of calm, dark water that seems innocuous but, once it has you, pulls you far from land.
We walk throughout the day, fighting to stay beyond the edges of the forest. We do not stop to eat but, fearing to be caught by the woods, walk while chewing supplies from our packs. At nightfall, our march is interrupted by something moving toward us through the snow.
Stick creatures, enormous and terrible, huge spiders made of brambles and branches. Monstrous things with gaping mouths, their bodies of burned and blackened bark, their teeth of stone and ice. Mortal body parts visibly part of them, as though someone took apart people like they were dolls and glued them back together in awful shapes.
“Make for the forest,” Tiernan says, resignation in his voice. His gaze goes to me and then to Oak. “Now.”
“But—” the prince begins.
“We’re not mounted,” Tiernan reminds him. “We have no chance on foot, unless we can get to someplace with cover. Let’s hope your mad plan was the right one after all.”
And then we stop fighting the forest and plunge into it.
We race past an enormous black boulder, then beneath a tree that makes a tinkling sound as the icicles threaten to fall. When I look over my shoulder, I am horrified to see the stick creatures lumbering toward us, faster than I expected.
“Here,” Oak says, beside a fallen tree half-covered in snow. “We hide. Wren, get as far underneath as you can. If they don’t see us, perhaps we can trick them into passing us by.”
Tiernan kneels, putting his sword in the snow beside him and motions for me to come. I crouch in the hollow beneath the tree, looking up at the spangled sky and the bright scythe of a moon.
And the falcon, soaring across it. “They have eyes in the air,” I say.
Puzzled, Oak follows my gaze, then he understands. “Tiernan,” he whispers, voice harsh.
Tiernan rolls to his feet and takes off running in the direction of the creatures, just as the bird screeches. “Get her away from here,” he calls back to the prince.
A moment later, a rain of ice arrows flies from the trees.
The shaft of one slams into the earth beside my feet, tripping me. I stop so short that I fall in the snow.
Oak hauls me up. He’s swearing, a streak of filthy words and phrases running into one another, some in mortal languages and some not.
The monstrous creatures are closing in. The nearer they get, the more clearly I can see the roots writhing through their bodies, the bits of skin and unblinking eyes, the great fang-like stone teeth.
“Keep going,” he tells me, and whirls around, drawing his blade. “We’re almost to the Citadel. If anyone can stop her, it’s you.”
“I can’t—” I start.
His eyes meet mine. “Go!”
I run, but not far before I draw my borrowed knife and duck behind a tree. If I do not have Oak’s skill, at least I have ferocity on my side. I will stab anything I can, and if something gets close enough, I will bite out whatever seems most like a throat.
My plan is immediately cut short. When I step out, an arrow skims over my leg, taking skin with it. A twisted creature with a bow lumbers toward me, notching another arrow. Aiming for my head.
Only to have its weapon cut in half as Oak strikes from the side, slashing through the bow and into the stick thing’s stomach. Its mouth opens once, but no sound comes out as Oak pivots and beheads it. The creature goes down in a shower of dirt, berries, and blood that scatter across the snow.
Oak’s face is still, but the frenzy of battle is back in his eyes. I think of his father, the redcap, whom he plans to rescue, and of how the prince must have been trained. I wonder if he has ever dipped a cap in someone’s blood.
More of the stick creatures come at him, with their claws and fangs and stolen flesh, their shining ice arrows and black-stained blades.
Oak might be a great swordsman, but it seems impossible that any one person could hold them all off. Nonetheless, he looks prepared to try.
His gaze darts to me. “Hide,” he mouths.
I scramble behind the black boulder and suck in a breath. The Stone Forest is so full of magic that even that is dizzying. A pulse of enchantment echoes off the trees and branches, ferns and rocks. I had heard the stories, but it was another thing to be inside it, to feel it surround me. The whole forest is cursed.
Before I can stop it, I am drawn into the spell. I can feel stone all around, and pressure, and thoughts that flow like honey.
Let me be flesh again. Me. Me. Two voices boom, loud enough to cause me to cover my ears, even though I hear the words only in my mind. Their raw power feels like touching a live wire. This boulder was once a troll king, turned to rock by the sun, and its twin is somewhere deeper in the forest. Their curse has grown, expanding to encompass the entire Stone Forest. I can smell it in the pine and the split blue fruit, so potent that I cannot understand how I could have not known before.
Anticipation whispers through the trees, like an indrawn breath. Urging me on.
I reach into the root of the enchantment, knotted tightly through everything around me. It started with the original curse of all trolls, to be turned to stone in the sunlight. As the magic has weakened, the trolls in Elfhame turn back to flesh at nightfall, but this curse is from a time when the magic was stronger, when stone was forever.
That curse grew outward, feeding on the magic of the troll kings. Nourished by their anger at being trapped, now their curse imprisoned their people and their people’s descendants.
I can feel the magic trying to bind me into it, to pull me into its heart the way the woods tried to envelop us. I feel as though I am being buried alive. Digging through dirt, ripping apart the hairy roots that attempt to encircle my limbs like snakes. But even as I pull myself free, the curse on the Stone Forest itself remains as sure as iron.
But now that I have its attention, perhaps I can give the magic another target.
There are invaders, I whisper in my mind, imagining the stick creatures as clearly as I am able. They will take your people from you.
I feel the strands of magic curl away from me with a sigh. And then the earth itself cracks, the force of it enough to throw me back. I open my eyes to see a fissure splitting along the ground, wider than a giant’s mouth.
A few minutes later, Oak stumbles out from between two trees, frost- covered ferns crackling beneath his steps. A wind blows through the branches to his left, sending a scattering of bladelike pieces of ice plummeting into the snow. The prince is bleeding from a cut on his shoulder, and both the bear fur and his cloak are gone.
I push myself to my feet. My hands are scratched raw, and my knee is bruised. The wound where the arrow grazed my leg is throbbing.
“What happened?” I ask.
A bellow comes from the forest.
“This place,” he says, giving the crack in the ground a wide berth. “Some of them fell into the earth as it opened. I cut a few apart. But there are still more. We have to keep moving.”
He reaches for my hand.
I take his, and together, we dart between trees. “Have you seen Tiernan?”
“Not yet.” I admire how thoroughly he is not letting himself think of any other possibility.
The prince stops suddenly. In the clearing ahead, an enormous spider creature of sticks and earth is shambling toward us.
“Come on,” I say, but he lets go of my hand. “What are you doing?” “There’s only the one,” he tells me, holding his needle-thin blade aloft. The spider is enormous, half as tall as one of the trees. It looms over us.
One is more than enough. “Oak!”
As he rushes at it, I cannot help thinking of what Tiernan said, about how Oak wanted to be a ship that rocks broke against.
The spider lunges, with snapping fangs that appear to be made from broken femurs. It comes down on the prince, who rolls beneath it, slicing upward with his sword. Dirt rains down on him. It swipes with a thorn- tipped leg.
My heart is beating so hard that it hurts.
Oak climbs up, into the creature. Into the weaving of branch and bone, as though it were a piece of playground equipment.
The spider flips onto its back, the thorns on its legs tearing at its own chest. It’s ripping out its own insides to get to him. Oak strikes out with his sword, hacking at it. Pieces shred off. It thrashes and bites at the air as it pulls itself apart. Finally, what remains of it goes still.
Oak climbs out of the husk, scratches all down his arms. He grins, but before I can say anything, there is a sound behind me. I whirl as three tall trolls step out from between the trees.
They have light green skin, golden eyes, and arrows tipped in bronze pointing directly at my chest. “You brought those monsters from the Citadel here,” one says.
“They followed us,” I sputter.
They wear armor of heavy cloth, stitched with a pattern of sworls like the map to a hedge maze or a fingerprint. “Come with us and meet our speaker,” says the tallest of them. “She will decide what to do with you.”
“It’s kind to invite a pair of strangers back to your village,” says Oak, walking to us, somehow misrepresenting their intention without actually lying. “But we’ve lost a friend in your woods and wouldn’t want to go anywhere without him.”
The tallest troll looks as though he is on the verge of turning his request into an order. Then, from the darkness, a knife catches the moonlight as it is placed to the base of the shortest troll’s neck.
“Let’s point those weapons elsewhere,” Tiernan says.
The tallest troll’s eyes narrow, and he lowers his bow. So does the other.
The third, knife to his throat, doesn’t move.
“You seem to have found your friend,” the troll says.
Oak gives him a slow, considering smile. “And are therefore left without a reason not to partake in your hospitality.”
|
The troll camp is set in a large clearing, where buildings of stone and clay have been constructed around a massive bonfire. Sparks fly up from it, then fall as black rain, smudging whatever they touch.
The houses are cleverly and artistically made. The stucco-like clay has been sculpted into shapes—spirals and trees and faces, all in the same pale mud color, decorate the dwellings. High up on the walls, circles of mostly green and amber glass have been inset, creating the effect of stained glass windows. I draw closer and see that they are parts of bottles, and spot a few in brilliant blues and crimsons.
The scale of everything is intimidating. As tall as Oak is, the trolls are at least a head taller. Most are well over eight feet, with bodies that are green or the gray of the stone they become.
We’re greeted by a troll woman, large and heavy of limb, who introduces herself as Gorga, the speaker of the village. She has an axe
strapped to her back and her hair in braids tipped with silver clasps. She wears a skirt of leather, with slits up the sides for easy movement.
“You’re hurt,” she says, taking in our bedraggled appearance. “And cold. Stay the day with us, and we will provision you and guide you to your destination safely next nightfall.”
That sounds like an offer entirely too good to be true.
Oak meets her eyes with great sincerity. “Your generosity appears boundless. But perhaps I could prevail upon you to tell me more about this place. And yourself.”
“Perhaps,” she says, looking pleased. “Share a cup of strong tea with me. I will give you some good black bread and honey.”
I glance over at Tiernan. He gives me a half smile and a shake of his head, inviting me into his amusement at Oak playing the courtier. “Let’s get something hot to eat and sit by the fire,” he says, clapping me on my shoulder. “He doesn’t need us.”
We walk together, me limping a bit. A few young trolls bring us cups made of stone, heavy in my hands. They are full of a warm liquid that looks like tea but tastes like boiled bark. I sit on a rock near the firepit. The heat is such that the stones are warm.
I am on my second cup when Oak joins us, holding a honey sandwich that he takes apart to offer us each a slice. “The troll king, Hurclaw, is off courting, according to Gorga. She was rather cagey about who, exactly, he was intending to marry. She was also rather cagey about what would happen if we tried to leave.”
“So we’re prisoners?” I whisper.
He sighs. “We are indulging the fiction that we are not.”
I take a bite of the sweetened black bread. Then I take two more, practically stuffing the thing in my face.
“For how long?” Tiernan asks.
Oak’s smile is tight. “As short a time as possible. Let’s all keep our eyes open. Meanwhile, Wren, maybe I can look at your leg.”
“No need,” I say, but he ignores me, rolling up the bottoms of my pants. There’s blood, but it’s truly not so bad. That doesn’t stop him from asking for bandages and hot water.
Since I left the mortal world, no one cared for my wounds but me. The gentleness of his touch makes me feel too much, and I have to turn my face,
lest he see.
An old troll man arrives carrying a wooden bucket full of water, sloshing over the lip when he moves. He has a patch over one eye and white hair in two long braids on either side of his head. In his ears, a half dozen gold hoops glitter.
“Let me take that,” Oak says, getting up.
The troll man snorts. “You? You’re little enough to take a bath in it, like a babe.”
“Nonetheless,” says the prince.
The old troll shrugs and sets the bucket down, indicating Oak should give it a try. He lifts it, surprising the troll.
“Put it on the fire to heat,” he directs the prince. “It’s for your lady.” Oak places it on the hook of the metal tripod over the flames.
The old man sits to watch it boil and takes out a roll of bandages from his bag, handing it over.
Oak kneels by my feet. He has dipped one of the bandages in the water and uses it to wipe off the blood and clean the cut. His fingers are warm as he wraps, and I try to concentrate on anything but the feel of his hands on my skin. “I worried you might have been poisoned back in the woods.”
A troll child comes to sit next to Oak, saving me from having to answer. He shyly asks one question and then another; a second child comes over with more questions. Oak laughs as the kids compare the points of their ears with his, touch the small horns growing from his brow and the smooth keratin of his hooves.
“Grandfather,” one of them says in a high, childish voice that belies his size. “Will you tell the prince a story?”
I was almost certain they knew who Oak was, but the confirmation does nothing to quiet my nerves.
“You want a story to pass the time, princeling?” the old troll man asks. “I do love a tale,” Oak says.
“Perhaps the story of the kings trapped in stone,” I put in. “And the curse.”
The troll man looks toward me, narrowing his eyes, then back toward the prince. “Is that truly what you want?”
He nods. The children’s giggling has ceased, and I worry I have broken some taboo by asking.
He begins with no hesitation, however. “There are two versions of this story. In the first, the kings are fools. That’s the story featured in songs we sang and plays we put on when I was a young man and given to laughter. When leaving the forest for longer than a handful of days seemed unimportant.
“They were supposed to be brothers, these troll kings. They shared power and riches peaceably for many years. Decked out in gold mined from deep in the earth, they had everything they wanted. That is, until they met a mortal boy, a goatherd, lithe of limb and with a face that ought to have been carved in marble. So comely that both the troll kings desired him above all others.
“He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the pretty goatherd had a wise mother, and she told him that if he chose one of the brothers, the other would surely prefer him dead rather than see his brother have what he wanted. If the goatherd wanted to live, he had to be sure never to choose.
“And so, the goatherd and his mother came up with a clever plan. He offered his love to the troll king who could hurl the largest boulder. First one and then the other threw larger and larger rocks until they were exhausted and no one could tell who had won.
“Then the goatherd told them that whosoever could defeat the other in a game of wrestling would have his heart. And so the brothers fought each other all through the night, and when the sun came up, both were turned to stone, and the goatherd was free to give his love where he pleased.”
I can imagine the funny play that might make, and how much it must annoy the cursed kings if they know about it. “What’s the serious version?”
The old troll clears his throat, and there is a pride in his face that makes it clear that however he laughed over the first story in his youth, this is the tale he prefers. “It is similar in many respects. It still concerns two troll kings, but in this case, they were never brothers. They had always been enemies, engaged in a war that spanned many decades. After so much slaughter on both sides, they decided they would wager the war on a contest between the two of them. And so, they met on the field of battle and threw themselves at each other. They crashed back and forth, so evenly matched that as soon as one got a good blow in, the other would get the next. As morning came closer, there were cries from both sides to abandon the contest. But each troll knew that if he cried off, defeat would be his reward.
And so, they held on to the last and became stone, locked in the embrace of battle.
“There is still one more variation. It is said that before they declared war on each other, they had been lovers whose passion for each other had turned to hatred, until their desire to best and possess the other was all- consuming.” He smiles at me with crooked teeth.
I look over at Tiernan. He’s staring at the fire as though he cannot help thinking of his own lover, now his enemy.
“You’re a good storyteller,” Oak says.
“I am the storyteller,” says the old troll, as though the prince’s praise is immensely inadequate. At that, he gets up and wanders off, taking most of the children with him.
“This forest is cursed,” I whisper to Oak.
He frowns at me, probably thinking I mean it in the same vague way that everyone else has when they refer to the Stone Forest.
Tiernan rises, walking off. The story seems to have bothered him.
I hurry on speaking, words tripping over one another in my haste to get them out. “That’s what the troll meant when he said leaving the forest for longer than a day or two seemed unimportant. Because there’s something keeping them here.”
“Then where’s Hurclaw?” he asks.
I shake my head. “All I know is that if he isn’t in the woods, then he must have found a way to stave off the consequences, at least temporarily. But I think that’s why he wants to wake the old kings. Not because he’s mad. Because it’s the only way to end the curse.”
Tiernan returns with bread and a soup of barley and onions. I see a few trolls skinning fallen reindeer and smell the cooking of freshly butchered meat. Music starts up, a rowdy tune.
There’s a raucousness in the air that wasn’t there before, the wild edge of revelry. The smiles of the trolls who look in our direction have a sharpness in them.
“We’ve been offered pallets for the night inside the speaker’s home,” says Oak carefully.
“That seems kind,” I say.
“A fine way to put it,” he says.
Tiernan is eating some of the reindeer meat, chewing on the bone. “We sneak out of here at first light,” he says, his voice low. “That’s when they can’t follow lest they turn to stone.”
We are interrupted by a handsome troll woman who comes over to the prince, laughing at how small he is and offering to braid his hair. Though it is not particularly long, he lets her, with a grin at me.
I remember his hands in my hair, combing out the tangles and braiding it, and feel a shiver all down my neck.
Just before dawn, the speaker arrives.
“Speaker Gorga,” Oak says, rising. He has three little braids in the back, one coming undone.
“Let me conduct you to my home, where you can rest,” she says. “Next nightfall, we will bring you safely across the snow to your destination.”
“Generous,” Oak says.
Tiernan glances around as we move through the village, alert to opportunities.
When we arrive at her house, she opens the door, beckoning us inside. A clay stove vents into the ceiling above and gives the place a cozy warmth. There’s a pile of logs by the fire, and she adds more, causing the stove’s embers to blaze up.
Then she waves us to a bed covered in furs of many sorts stitched together. I will have to hop to get up on it. “You may sleep in my bed tonight.”
“That’s too generous,” Oak tells her.
“It is a small thing.” She takes down a stoppered bottle and pours the contents into four little cups. “Now let us have a drink together before you rest.”
She lifts her cup and throws it back.
I pick up mine. The herbal, almost licorice scent hits my senses. Sediment shifts in the bottom. I think of my fears that first night when Oak offered me tea. And I think about how easy it would be to put the poison at the bottoms of certain cups, instead of in a bottle, to make it appear we were all drinking the same thing.
I glance at the prince, wanting to give him a warning but unable to come up with a way to do so without Speaker Gorga noticing. Oak drinks his in a
gulp and then reaches for mine, plucking it out of my fingers and drinking it, too.
“No!” I cry, but I am too late.
“Delicious,” he announces, grabbing for Tiernan’s. “Like mother’s milk.”
Even Speaker Gorga looks alarmed. If she had measured out the doses carefully, then the prince just drank three times what she’d calculated.
“Forgive my greed,” Oak says.
“My lord,” Tiernan cautions, horror in his face.
“Perhaps you would like another round?” Speaker Gorga suggests uncertainly, holding up the half-full bottle.
“I might as well, and the others have yet to have a taste,” the prince says.
She pours more into the cups. When I look into the depths, there is sediment, but significantly less. The poison, whatever it was, was already in the vessels. Prepared ahead of us even entering the room.
I take mine and tip it against my teeth, but do not drink. I make myself visibly swallow twice. Across the table, Oak has gotten Gorga’s attention with some question about the fruits encased in ice, and so I am able to drop my hand beneath the table and surreptitiously pour out the contents onto my cloak.
I do not look down, and so I’m not sure if I’ve gotten away with it. Nor do I dare look at Tiernan to see if he has managed something similar.
“Why don’t I leave the bottle?” Speaker Gorga asks, putting it down. “Let me know if there is anything else you require.”
“What more could we ever want?” Oak muses. With a small, tense smile, she rises and leaves.
For a moment, we sit just as we are. Then the prince stands, staggers, and falls to his knees. He begins to laugh.
“Throw it up,” Tiernan says, clapping Oak’s back.
The prince manages to make himself retch twice into a stone bowl before slumping down beside it. “Don’t worry,” he says, his amber eyes shining too brightly. Despite the cold, sweat has started on his forehead. “It’s my poison.”
“What have you done?” I ask him, my voice harsh. When he only smiles dreamily, I turn to Tiernan. “Why would he do that?”
The knight appears equally horrified. “Because he is madder than the troll king.”
I open and close drawers, hoping to find an antidote. There’s nothing that looks even vaguely promising. “What was it? What does he mean, his poison?”
Tiernan goes over to one of the cups, sniffs it, then shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
“I was born with blusher mushroom in my veins,” the prince says, the words coming out slowly, as though his tongue is not quite his own. “It takes a great deal of it to affect me for long.”
I recall what he said the night he’d been poisoned with deathsweet.
Alas, that it wasn’t blusher mushroom.
“How did you know what it was?” I demand, kneeling beside him, thinking of how recently he’d had another poison in his blood.
“I was desperate,” he forces out. “I was just so afraid that one of you . . . that you . . .” His words trail off, and his eyes seem to be staring at nothing. His mouth moves a little, but not enough for sound to come out.
I watch the rise and fall of his chest. It is very slow, too slow. I press my fingers to his clammy forehead, despair making everything feel as though time is speeding and crawling all at once.
Just thinking requires pushing through a fog of dread. He knows what he’s doing, I tell myself. He’s not a fool. He’s not dying. He’s not dead.
Tiernan looks up at the shadows changing in the bottle glass high above us. A pinkish, soft light filters through, showing me the anguish on his face.
Dawn.
He tries the door. There’s no visible lock, but it doesn’t open. Barred. And there are, of course, no windows through which sunlight might strike Gorga and turn her to stone. He throws his whole weight against the door suddenly, but it doesn’t budge.
“This is her house, not normally a prison, so whatever is keeping us inside has to have been moved for that purpose,” I say, standing, numbly working through the possibilities as I speak. I recall the heaviness of the door, the thickness of the wood. “It swings outward. She’s probably put something against it.”
“Does it matter?” Tiernan snaps.
I frown. “I guess not, since we should just take off the hinges.”
He stares at me for a moment and gives a panicked, despairing laugh. “I am not going to live it down, you being the one to come up with that.”
There are many things I don’t know, but I know a great deal about imprisonment.
Tiernan takes apart the hinges with a knife, making quick work of them, while I wrap Oak in a too-large woolen blanket. Giving in to temptation, I brush his bronze hair back from where it has fallen over one eye. At my touch, he gives a shiver.
See, I tell myself. Not dead.
“We won’t be able to carry him far,” I warn, although that must be obvious.
Tiernan has pried the door off to reveal a massive boulder blocking our way. It’s more round than square, though, and there are gaps along the sides.
“You’re small. Wriggle through and find something to put him on—a cart, a sleigh, anything. I’ll try to move him,” Tiernan tells me.
“I’ll be quick,” I say, and wedge myself into the gap between the boulder and the outer wall of the house. By climbing up a little and moving slowly, I manage to ease my way out.
It is strange to find the troll village so quiet as golden light spills over it. Since Gorga is the speaker, I assume that she has more than most of the others, so I figure I ought to start my search with her place. I creep around the back of her house. A small stone-and-clay outbuilding rests near the edge of the clearing. When I wedge open the door, I see a sled inside, and rope.
A sled. Exactly what we need for Oak.
He’ ll be fine, he’ ll wake in time to find his father, to be yelled at by Tiernan, and for me to . . .
The thoughts of what I will do after he wakes fade at the scent of rot in the air. The cold tamped it down, but it is definitely coming from something nearby. I move past the sled, deeper into the outbuilding. Whatever is decaying seems to be inside a chest in the back.
It’s unlatched and opens easily when I push up the lid.
Inside are clothes, armor, and other supplies. Swords. Arrows. All of them stained with gore, blackened by time. Things worn by victims who have come through this forest before. My heart thunders, imagining my
own clothes among them along with Oak’s glittering golden mail. Then, gritting my teeth, I stick my hand inside and fish around until I come up with a tabard that looks like the sort worn by Madoc’s soldiers. Possibly it belonged to Lihorn, whose head we found staked out on the snowy plain. I manage to find clothing that reminds me of what the huldufólk who used to serve Lady Nore wore, some of them blood-spattered.
My heart races at the evidence of what’s happened to other travelers. I heap a few onto the sled and pull it back to the house. Tiernan is standing in the snow, Oak leaning against him as though he’s passed out after a night of too much wine.
“We need to go,” I whisper.
Using the clothes for padding, we strap him to the sled. Tiernan drags it behind us as we creep out of the troll encampment as quietly as we are able. As we get closer to the tree line, I feel the curse try to steer me the wrong way, to make my steps turn back toward the forest’s heart. But now that I am aware, the magic has a harder time putting my feet wrong. I cut in front of Tiernan so that he can follow me. Each step feels as though I am
fighting through fog until we hit the very edge of the woods.
I look behind me to see Tiernan hesitate, confused. “Are we—” Behind him, on the sled, Oak’s body writhes against the ropes.
“It’s this way.” I reach for Tiernan’s gloved hand and force myself to take it, to pull him along with me, though my legs feel leaden. I take another step. And another. As we hit the expanse of snow, my breaths come more easily. I release Tiernan’s hand and squat, sucking in air.
On the sled, Oak has gone still again. “What was that?” he asks, shuddering. He looks back at the woods and then at me, as though he can’t quite remember the last few minutes.
“The curse,” I say. “The farther we are from the forest, the better. Come on.”
We begin moving again. We walk through the morning, the sun shining off the snow.
An hour in, Oak begins to mutter to himself. We stop and check on him, but he seems disoriented.
“My sister thinks that she’s the only one who can take poison, but I am poison,” he whispers, eyes half-closed, talking to himself. “Poison in my blood. I poison everything I touch.”
That’s such a strange thing to hear him say. Everyone adores him. And yet, I recall him running away at thirteen, sure so many things were his fault.
I frown over that as we trudge on, bits of ice catching in my hair and on my tongue.
“You’re tough, you know that?” Tiernan tells me, his breath clouding in the air. “And quick-thinking.”
Perhaps this is his way of thanking me for guiding him out of the woods.
“Not just some rabid animal, unworthy of being your companion on a quest?” I counter, still resentful over him tying my ankle to the motel bed.
He doesn’t defend himself. “And not hideous, even. In case you wondered what I thought, which I am fairly sure you didn’t.”
“Why are you saying all this?” I ask, my voice low. I glance back at Oak, but he is staring at the sky, laughing a little to himself. “You can’t possibly care what I look like.”
“He talked about you,” Tiernan says.
I feel like an animal after all, one that’s been baited in its den. I both dread and desire him to keep talking. “What did he say?”
“That you didn’t like him.” He gives me an evaluating look. “I thought maybe you’d had a falling-out when you were younger. But I think you do like him. You just don’t want him to know it.”
The truth of that hurts. I grind my sharp teeth together.
“The prince is a flatterer. And a charmer. And a wormer around things,” Tiernan informs me, entirely unnecessarily. “That makes it harder for him to be believed when he has something sincere to say. But no one would ever accuse me of being a flatterer, and he—”
He bites off the rest because, there, in the distance, rising out of the snow, is the Ice Needle Citadel.
One of the towers has fallen. The castle of cloudy ice, like some enormous piece of quartz, was once full of spires and points, but many of them have cracked and splintered. The jagged icicles that were once ornamentation have grown into elephantine structures that cover some of the windows and cascade down the sides. My breath stutters. I have seen this place so many times in my night terrors that, even half-demolished, I cannot help but feel like I am in another awful dream.
