Ignite the Fire: Incendiary by Karen Chance
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I felt the fey’s steps falter, as if he hadn’t expected this, either. The slowed pace gave me time to examine the latest fossil in detail as we approached. Only, in this case, I would have wished for less.
Because it wasn’t an animal captured in stone this time.
It was a person.
I blinked, hoping what I was seeing was a trick of the light, which found all the dark places in the rock and made the dips and bulges seem almost to flow, like water. But the image remained the same. And it wasn’t merely a hollow in roughly the right shape, which would have been bad enough.
This was a skeleton, half buried in stone, and looking like it was fighting to get out.
But not the skeleton of a man. A mer-creature stared out at me, over a distance of who knew how many years. The limbs were frozen in place, and yet looked like they were still thrashing against the enveloping waves of rock that had engulfed him. There was no flesh on the bones anymore, but their thickness, and the breadth of the shoulder blades, showed that this had once been a powerful individual.
And yet the rock had won.
The rib cage was mostly filled with sediment, with just a few bones erupting from the surface. The great tail was visible near the bottom, with a delicate, skeletonized fin fanned out in motion, as if trying to churn up the water to escape. But it wasn’t water that menaced him. One arm was likewise almost completely visible, as if grasping for safety, and the skull . . .
Was screaming.
I swallowed, and tried to tell myself that it was just the way the jaw had fallen open after death. But that wasn’t what it looked like. It looked like he had died fighting the stone, which had crushed and then filled in his ribcage, like liquid magma. Or, I realized sickly, like the stone I’d just seen in the “elevator”, running free and then solidifying back up in an instant.
I’d met some living merpeople once, in a secret coven trading post, and they had been beautiful. As this one was, even in death, with elegant lines and indentions in the rock where long locks of hair had once spread out around the skull, adding to the impression of movement. But I didn’t think his beauty was why he was displayed here.
And then I knew it wasn’t, when we rounded another bend and came face to face with a massacre.
The fey, who had already slowed his steps to a crawl, now stopped them altogether. As if the sight hit him, too, like a punch to the gut, although he must have seen it before. But I didn’t think it mattered in this case.
Some things you didn’t get used to.
Dozens of skeletons, half buried in rock, surrounded us on all sides. That was even true overhead, where the stone “wave” that had killed them broke over our heads, creating a tunnel of pain, an open graveyard. Even worse, the light made the bodies seem to move, with desperate, pleading gestures and silent cries, that had a shiver going up even the fey’s spine. As if he could hear them, too.
Many of them were male, with the same broad shoulders and thick bones of the first skeleton we’d seen. But there were others scattered around with smaller frames: women, or possibly children in the case of the slightest. Like the one who peeked out from behind the tail of a man, with the small body mostly lost in rock.
The fey slowly walked over to it, and knelt down in front of it, as it was near the bottom of the wall. There wasn’t much to see, just the tiny face, smaller than my spread hand, and the tops of a pair of delicate shoulders. The face looked strangely curious, staring at me as I stared back, and once again, I had the impression of our gaze meeting across the ages. I felt a shiver run down my spine, a hard one, but the fey’s attention had been caught by something else.
There was a rope of pearls around the girl’s skeletal neck, not big ones, not even child sized ones. But tiny things, barely larger than seed pearls, that had been woven into the shape of flowers. The ends of the necklace were buried in stone, which was why it had survived, still caught in place after all these years. The fey reached out, and I instinctively shrank back.
Don’t touch it! I thought. Don’t, don’t, don’t! I didn’t want to see this girl’s trauma, experience her last moments, or feel the press of the rock that had stopped her chest from expanding, suffocating her.
I didn’t want to be buried alive.
But the only thing I felt when he stripped off a gauntlet, and pressed both fingers and forehead against the stone, were the tiny, smooth bumps of the pearl flowers.
We stayed like that for a while. I didn’t know what he was feeling, as I was too stunned to even try to read his thoughts. I was wondering how many hours somebody must have spent weaving such an exquisite jewel. She had been loved, this girl, possibly by the man who had died trying to protect her.
And who had failed nonetheless, because how do you outrun a wave of stone?
It didn’t look like anyone had. And she hadn’t been an aberration: no one here looked like a soldier. I couldn’t see much from the fey’s current position, but there hadn’t been any bodies dressed for combat when we came in. There’d been no weapons or armor in sight, and jewels had still gleamed dully at a few throats or wrists.
And if the jewels remained, any weapons should have, too. Or their impressions, if this was so long ago to have rotted away metal. Yet I hadn’t seen any.
The wave appeared to have solidified again as quickly as it had come, gluing everything in place. Including the skulls, long since stripped of flesh, but howling at us from all sides. I was suddenly, profoundly grateful that I wasn’t actually here. So much suffering, so much death, all crowded together in one place, might have overwhelmed me, even without touching anything. Staring into those large, darkened eye sockets, I was sure it would have.
Because, Faerie or no, this place was definitely haunted.
Which raised an uncomfortable question. Guinn had said that fey bodies and souls were linked in a way that those on Earth simply weren’t. That the two were inseparable until the body completely rotted away and the world reabsorbed it again, freeing the soul to live anew in another form.
Only . . . what happened if that cycle never took place? What happened if the bodies were displayed like trophies in a wall of stone? Did that mean that the souls were also trapped here, bound to stay forever, silently screaming?
I was glad for my ignorance; glad I didn’t know.
Footsteps, quiet but echoing in the stillness, hurried toward us. I wanted to look up, to see who it was, but the fey didn’t turn his neck or even lift his head. Not until the footsteps faltered as they neared us, and a hand found our back.
And then, when he did look up, his face was hot. I could feel the anger staining our cheeks, even without being able to see it. And his expression must have matched it, because the bearded fey we’d seen below abruptly drew back a few steps.
“When?” my fey said, his voice hard.
“A few days ago. He had it moved in shortly after you left.”
“How . . . convenient.”
“He wants to throw you, Arsen—to provoke a reaction—”
“I know what he wants.”
“You mustn’t let him!” The hand was back, this time clutching our arm. “I know what this means to you—”
“Do you?” My fey—Arsen, I guessed—rose to his feet and gauntleted his hand again. “Do you indeed?”
The bearded fey paused, and then shook his head. “No,” he said. “In truth, I can’t imagine. But my prince—”
“Don’t call me that! There is but once prince here, and he is a monster.”
He started down the corridor again, but his feet faltered after only a few steps, as if the silent cries echoed in his head, too.
“It was beautiful,” Arsen said, looking around. “Like nothing I’d ever seen. I was barely old enough to hold a sword, but after father . . . after father’s death, I was head of house. I was required to be there—”
“I know—”
“Do you?” he said again, turning back to the older fey. “My first campaign, my first chance to prove myself, any boy’s dream. Not that I expected to have to. I was in titular command, but it was merely a symbolic post, the king said. To prove to others that my father’s treachery hadn’t tainted his view of the entire clan. It was an honor . . .”
He gazed around again, but the bearded fey did not. I could see him in glimpses, whenever Arsen’s eyes went past, and he was keeping his own squarely fixed on us. “I should have come with you,” he said. “Then and today. I shouldn’t have allowed you to see this alone.”
Arsen acted like he hadn’t heard, and I honestly thought that might be the case. Because, when his voice came again, it was tinted with wonder, as if he was back there, in that watery memory. “It was like nothing I’d ever seen,” he said again. “Beautiful beyond words, beyond imagining. A different world.
“I expected a palace, but there wasn’t one. Huge, golden shells provided housing, spread across an entire mountainside and spilling into the valley beyond, all under the waves. They grew gardens of sea crops, which tiny schools of fish swam across, like colorful birds. Children darted in and out of kelp fields, playing like ours do in a forest.” He turned on the older fey again, his voice anguished. “Do you understand? They were just like us—”
“I understand—”
“Do you?” It was louder that time, echoing off the gruesome walls, and coming back to us, as if out of a hundred throats. The bearded fey started slightly, and his eyes darted about, as if he was feeling the eeriness of the moment, too. It honestly felt like the whole corridor was screaming.
But then he hurried forward and his hand caught our arm. “Keep your voice down! I beg you—”
“Beg him,” Arsen said, throwing off his hold. “Beg the one who slaughtered them under a flag of truce. Beg the one who tore their king apart, with his own trident. Beg the one who claimed it as my doing, my victory, my honor.
“Beg him!”
Arsen took off, striding down the corridor this time, fury in every step.
Until our arm was caught again, in a grip like steel. Arsen tugged against it, but went nowhere, something that seemed to surprise him. But the bearded one was stronger than he looked, and he held on, with both hands now.
“Don’t let my failings cause you to do something rash,” he said quickly. “We have plans, plans that an outburst, however warranted, could undo—”
“Don’t tell me of your plans,” Arsen hissed. “I’ve heard that tale before, time out of mind. That’s all the nobles do, they plan. To make themselves feel like they’re doing something, to be a sop to their consciences, while he plunders and mutilates and kills—”
“And what would you have us do?” the bearded fey asked, in a low voice. “You know better than most what happens to those who move against him. Why do you think he brought this here? Yes, he wants to provoke some rash action that will allow him to finally lay your family low. But this is a message to us, as well. Follow Arsen’s lead, and end up like these poor bastards, like his father before him—”
Arsen moved so fast that I didn’t even see him, and I currently was him. Yet it took me by surprise every bit as much as it seemed to do the bearded fey, when he was jerked off the ground and slammed into the wall. And held there, one handed, buy a furious prince.
“Do not dare to speak his name!”
“I haven’t, have I?” the bearded fey asked. His voice, worried and furtive a moment ago, was suddenly clear and cold. “But I do speak of his fate, and well I might. I would not see you suffer it, and spill your blood uselessly. And thereby play directly into the king’s hands. Aeslinn wants an excuse; your anger will give him one—”
Arsen abruptly released him, and only fey reflexes kept the portly figure from sprawling on the floor. But he kept his feet, and also kept talking, although it would have been more prudent to stop. And to fail to follow when Arsen strode off again, clearing the stone wave and passing into a tunnel of what looked like frozen water, but which I slowly realized was stone, too.
It looked like blue agate, but it wasn’t, at least not the Earth variety. It had a shiny, smooth surface, but instead of the usual mineral waves or quartz occlusions, this had . . . something else. Different bubbles of blue, some deep azure, some pale cerulean, some almost milky white, bumped against the surface all around us, splattering in odd, round shapes before disappearing again. It was like standing in the middle of a giant lava lamp, both beautiful and disturbing.
Only Arsen didn’t seem to notice, perhaps because the bearded fey had not chosen the better part of valor. Our arm was caught again, and this time, Arsen turned with a snarl. But the older fey did not back down.
“Your word.”
“I don’t owe it to you!”
“No, you don’t. You owe it to them, to those who walked this path before you, to your father—and yes, I’ll name him. He deserves to be named, to be remembered, for what he did: Áskell of the Mountains, prince of the noble house of Iárnkaré, last scion of the ancient Rock Wolf clan. When we still lived in caves like savages, your family led us; when magic first stirred in our veins, your people ruled.” Arsen tried to pull away, but the old fey held on. “Long before the gods came, long before our world was torn asunder, you called and we came, and we followed.
“They will follow you again. But not now. Not yet.”
“Then when? After he’s destroyed us? I don’t care who leads; I care what we become—”
“And without you, what do you think that will be? Patience—”
“And how many more will die while I am patient?” Arsen said savagely.
“However many need to. Better to lose some than all, and to forfeit a battle than a war. You want revenge, I understand—”
“Then you understand nothing! What’s done is done!”
“And may yet be undone. Your father died for a cause he believed in. Honor him by completing that task, not by throwing your life away to no purpose.”
“It has a purpose if it removes that thing from the throne!”
The bearded fey just looked at him calmly, and said a single word. “If.”
Arsen stared at him for a moment, then tore away, striding down the hallway. This time, no one followed. Although I honestly don’t think it would have mattered.
His thoughts were too jumbled to listen to anything else anyway, and so were mine.
There were more wonders to be seen, but I barely noticed. We exchanged the blue expanse for a white one, with walls of what looked like ice. The cracks in the brittle-looking exterior constantly changed as we strode underneath, with soft, splintering sounds that kept making me flinch, thinking the whole ceiling was about to come down.
After that came huge crystal formations in a dull pinkish red that curved over our heads like a bower, like masses of stone flowers, and which should have been lovely. And in a way, they were, like walking through a garden—one caught in a stiff breeze. Because the rock clusters were moving, opening and closing and wafting back and forth, like garlands blowing in the wind.
Or like what they were: living rock.
But as amazing and beautiful as I would normally have found it, Aeslinn’s trophy wall had left an acid taste in my mouth, and a creeping sense of horror up my backbone. It had killed my sense of wonder, to the point that I was thinking of trying to pull away. To leave this strange journey, even though I knew I’d probably never have this chance again, to see how Faerie worked from the inside, to understand even a few of its leaders. So, I stayed, as we approached what proved to be the final stretch, this one clad in obsidian.
It was as black as night and covered not only the corridor itself, but the huge doors at its end, which were opened by a couple of fey guards as we approached. It spilled all over everything like a puddle of ink, and yet . . . there was movement in there, too. Little plinks, like falling raindrops, showed up in the midnight color occasionally, only visible by the light that they disturbed on its surface.
And there was a lot of surface. We walked through the doors, but not into another room as I’d expected, but into a short corridor that was completely black—walls, floor and ceiling. It gave me a weird feeling, like I was falling into nothingness. The stone didn’t help, seeming to absorb any light that dared to enter, and yet, in the darkness, I could still hear them: plink, plink, plink.
It was the only thing I could hear, as the stone muffled sound. It was like walking into a sensory deprivation chamber, and I suddenly realized that I wouldn’t do very well in one of those. I would be gibbering inside a minute, something I could now confirm with absolute certainty, since that was about the time it took for us to traverse the hallway.
And finally burst out of the other side, after what felt like a year, giving me half a second to feel genuine, heartfelt gratitude, before—
“Where is that bastard Arsen?”