Her blind deception the.., p.32
Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection Series Book 2), page 32
‘This will serve two purposes,’ she said, shaking it. ‘It will show you the way through the tunnels and if you present it to the Yoxvese, they will know I’ve sent you and refrain from killing you on sight. Maybe.’
I picked it up with the tips of my fingers, trying to touch only the stone and not the foot, and held it before my eyes. ‘How is a chicken foot supposed to show me the way?’ I asked, wondering if I had misplaced my faith in her. Perhaps she was just a mad old lady living in the mountains.
‘The stone will grow warmer when you are on track and cooler when you’re bumbling about in the wrong direction.’ She stroked the length of one of the withered toes, all the way down the talon. ‘The foot feeds the stone.’
Hotter and colder. Like a perversion of a children’s game. My mind flashed to a towering hedge, quick footsteps and thrilling anticipation, a voice in the dark. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Baba Yaga’s eyes narrowed and her hand darted out to flick my nose.
‘Hey!’ I batted her away and rubbed at the stinging spot. ‘What was that for?’
‘Don’t wander off on flights of fancy when you need to be listening. The Yoxvese live in the very center of the Yawn, in a deep canyon nearly impossible to access except through a mess of underground caves. Now, that charm should last long enough to see you through them and back again, but it hasn’t enough energy for much beyond that, so don’t activate it until you’re in the caves.’
‘How do I activate it?’
‘A bit of blood will do. What?’ she demanded when I grimaced. ‘All things have a price, girl, especially magic. You of all people should know that by now.’
‘How do I find the caves in that case?’
‘Follow the same river that led you here. When it splits, you’ll shadow the north leg to a cave mouth and under the ground from there.’
‘How long will it take me to get to the other side?’
‘How should I know?’ she barked over her shoulder as she wandered into the kitchen. ‘How fast do you walk?’
I shot my gaze to the ceiling and bit down on a retort. It was too early to be contending with cranky witches, especially when I was already feeling frayed. I touched my fingers to my face again, and when this time I felt the ridges of scar tissue I snatched them away, my heart hammering. Best not to think about it. I would do what I came here for, then I’d go back for my mirror and I’d never have to wear these scars again.
I freshened up as best I could with only the previous day’s clothes to wear and my fingers to manage my hair, and when I was done, I found that my satchel was heavier than it had been before. When I opened it, I found a thick candle and half a loaf of a dense, seeded bread wrapped in a cloth among the other things I’d brought with me.
‘For the tunnels,’ she said as she stood waiting by the open door. ‘The candle will take blood, just as the stone does. But you’ll need to keep feeding it.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. She frowned.
‘Don’t thank me, iaral. You’ll repay me yet.’
I rifled around in the bag a moment longer, checking every corner. Where—
‘If you’re looking for that string of death you brought into my house, you’ll not find it,’ she barked. ‘You’re lucky I don’t demand you pay for it in kind as those who died to create it did. You would be stupid to carry such evil on you when you walk into the Living Valley.’
I flushed slightly as I closed the satchel. Maybe it was for the best that she took the necklace off me. Possessing it made me feel oily.
She held out a hand. ‘Now, our deal,’ she said. Resigned, I took it. Her palm was warm and dry. My skin prickled, then a sharp pain snapped through my fingers and up into my wrist, just as it had on a rainy street corner in the Trough when I’d taken his deal. It was over in the time it took me to inhale, leaving nothing behind but a faintly bitter taste on the back of my tongue and a smell in the air that was all too familiar, acrid smoke and metal. It made something in me ache.
‘I suppose I’ll see you soon,’ I said, dropping her hand and passing through the door.
‘If something hunts you, run. You’ll not win a fight against much that live in these mountains, and I want you to return to me before the moon is full. Alive would be better.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ I muttered, slinging the satchel over my shoulder and heading down her garden path before she could give me any more helpful advice.
The river cut through the mountains, twisting like a snake in so many bends that I couldn’t get a sense of what was ahead or behind me for more than a few hundred meters at a time, but I followed it faithfully, trusting that Baba Yaga was telling the truth, because what other choice did I have? The trees reached out with branches like twisted fingers, moving more than trees should. I tried to keep out of their reach, my skin crawling as I remembered the way they’d seemed to grab at me during my mad run to Baba Yaga’s house, and while every now and again a root or a branch would snap towards me, they seemed to leave me alone. Sometimes, I would catch sight of lights out of the corner of my eye, flickering between the branches, but whenever I looked in their direction, they would vanish.
Perhaps I was just seeing things that weren’t there. Perhaps Baba Yaga had drugged me with that strange tea she had given me, or with the stew. It was almost easier to believe that than to believe the trees were alive and filled with spirits or ghosts or something else I didn’t understand.
A sudden movement by the water drew my attention and I turned my head just in time to see something scaled and sinewy slip into the water, flicking a forked tail as it went. I hefted the satchel higher on my shoulder and picked up my pace.
When my stomach was clawing at me, I ate the bread the witch had given me, taking hasty mouthfuls without slowing my pace, not trusting the forest enough to stop and rest. I was just licking the crumbs from my fingers when I rounded a bend to find the river widened, flowing around a grassy island in a beam of sunlight before it split into a fork, just as Baba Yaga had said. I froze, my breath catching, as I caught sight of what was on that island. A pair of leathery wings were folded over tan-coloured haunches. A spine-studded ruff rippled as the creature bobbed its head up and down, licking at a paw.
Slowly, I crept a step back, my heart thundering as I remembered the sounds of Lord Boccius screaming as a creature just like this one tore him apart. It was faced away from me, and it didn’t stop grooming itself, so I took another step, then another, trying to keep from moving too fast when all I wanted to do was run as fast as I could while screaming at the top of my lungs. A twig snapped beneath my foot. The creature’s head lifted and it looked around until its yellow eyes fixed on me. The nostrils in its flat, lizard-like nose flared.
Fuck.
It rose to its feet, its muscles bunching up, its wings slowly spreading. I stumbled backwards, not wanting to take my eyes off it. A low, huffing growl rumbled out of it.
Fuck!
It leapt, its wings catching the air with a crack! I cringed down, one hand over my head, the other scrabbling about for a rock, a branch, anything I could use as a weapon, bracing for the rip of claws and teeth. But the creature soared into the sky, flapping its wings hard and buffeting me with gusts of air as it climbed, and then it was flying higher into the mountains and out of sight.
I stayed in a crouch, gasping in sharp breaths of panic as the fear kept me tensed for fight or flight. I was shaking so hard I didn’t think I’d be able to stand. When I had convinced myself that the creature wasn’t coming back to get me, I slowly straightened, clutched my satchel to me and ran.
The cave was barely more than a crack in the river bank, just big enough for me to squeeze into. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the idea of going down into a dark hole based on nothing but the word of a witch. But I was still hunching over, expecting an attack from above, those yellow eyes glowing in my mind. What other options existed other than entering the cave? I’d already come this far. I drew the knife from the satchel, instantly feeling a little bolder with the hilt in my hand. I turned my other hand over, looking for a spot to cut, before settling on a point on my upper forearm that seemed it would hurt the least.
Pressing the point of the blade to my skin, I counted to three and jabbed, drawing a sharp sting and a pinprick of blood. I found the chicken foot charm and smeared the blood over the stone. Nothing dramatic happened, but perhaps it did feel a little warmer beneath my fingers. Aether’s teeth, I hoped the bloody thing would work as Baba Yaga said it would.
There was no point delaying any longer. I had to go in. I sucked in a breath and turned my body side on to the cave entrance, edging through with no space to spare. When I popped out on the other side, I was in a tunnel so low I had to duck my head. The air was cool, laden with a damp that clung to my skin, and the faint sound of rushing water thrummed against the stone. As my eyes adjusted, I realized with a considerable amount of relief that it wasn’t pitch dark. Shreds of a strange, luminescent sort of moss clung to the walls, emitting a glow that was very faint, but enough to at least tell the wall from the floor. Still, I fumbled about in my satchel, found the candle Baba Yaga had given me and rubbed it against my still-bleeding arm. A strange, white flame sprung to life, throwing eerie shadows on the walls. I began to walk, following the descending floor, and tried not to think about a similar journey beneath the ground and how much comfort there had been in resting my hand on the man who’d been walking in front of me then. That man was the reason I was in this cursed cave in the first place, so he was no touchstone for reassuring thoughts.
The tunnel opened out into a wide cavern hung with stalactites dripping water into pools so still they might have been glass, and then narrowed again, curling and bending so tightly in places I worried I wouldn’t be able to squeeze through. I hated the dark, hated the places where the luminescent moss was sparse and my candle light didn’t reach the walls, hated the cold and the damp and the sense of being buried alive. But I clung to that little stone, and when I reached a place where the tunnel split and the stone suddenly turned cold in my hand, I stumbled back and took the other path, relieved when it was immediately warm again. After that first split, the tunnel turned into a mess of openings and forks. When I reached another cavern lined with half a dozen different tunnel mouths, I realized how lost I could get down here. How I could die down here.
I walked for what felt like hours, smearing the candle with blood whenever it began to dim. My eyes flickered to it constantly, anxiously awaiting the moment it would wink out and leave me with nothing but the moss to light my way. I wondered what would happen if it did. Would I curl up into a little ball and scream myself into oblivion? If I didn’t, the only reason would be sheer strength of will, because I very much thought that would be what I wanted to do.
A light flickered into view ahead, disappearing almost instantly. I rubbed at my eyes, squinted as two more did the same. Then a single, glowing orb of violet darted along the tunnel, heading towards me, and when it reached me it whizzed around me in a quick, jagged loop that left a glowing trail behind my eyelids, then dashed back down the tunnel in the opposite direction again.
Cautiously, I crept forward, seeing more clearly that ahead of me the tunnel narrowed back into a split of an opening, and beyond it there was light.
Chapter 29
Rhiandra
I couldn’t stop staring. I was standing at the base of a deep chasm in the earth, ringed on all sides by craggy mountains wreathed with clouds. Flecks of rain iced my face as I counted a string of impossible structures towering over me; limestone pillars that seemed to defy gravity to remain standing. In the dusky light of evening, it looked as though they were floating in midair. Even more impossible was the collection of lights at the peak of each pillar, like small cities perched in the sky. Was this what I’d seen in my vision of Gwinellyn, with the staircase and the cliff and the boy?
The swooping snap of wings reached me, and a moment later I was buffeted by wind as something descended on me in a flurry of wings.
‘Stop! Disarm yourself!’ A voice bellowed, followed by the same chuffing growl I’d heard hours ago. ‘Surrender or be killed!’
‘Baba Yaga sent me!’ I found myself shouting as I thrust the chicken foot into the air. ‘Please! I mean no harm.’
There was a soft thud, and the beats of air abruptly stopped. I warily eyed the creature now perched on the ledge before me, and it peered back at me with just as much suspicion, possibly trying to decide whether or not I’d make a good meal. It was roughly the height of a large horse, but it looked like a giant lizard, with a long, barbed tail and two muscled hind legs. A tall, bulky male slid from the creature’s back. His hair was shaven close to his skull, accentuating his sharp features, and my attention caught on the way it emphasized his pointed ears. His expression was grim. My skin prickled with a strange sensation, like someone was hovering their hand just above the surface of my arm, my shoulder, my cheek, so close but not quite touching. It made me shiver.
‘You’re under the witch’s protection?’ he asked. He spoke with a strange accent, the words dipping and rising in places they didn’t on my tongue. I could see the way his eyes roamed my face, my scars, the way his frown deepened, and I wanted to hide myself behind my hands. But I stood tall.
‘I am. I’ve come here to find someone.’
He stretched out a hand, and it took me a moment to realise what he wanted. I dropped the chicken foot onto his palm and he held it close to his face as he examined it. Then he cut his gaze back to me. ‘You’ve come for Gwin.’
The sound of the shortened name in the mouth of this strange man gave me a feeling I couldn’t name. The gravity of what I’d done to her stood in stark relief for a moment, stepping out from behind all my excuses and justifications. I’d sent her into this dangerous place. I’d put her in the hands of these strange people.
‘You’re alone?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He nodded. ‘Good. I will take you to her, and then you will leave.’ He gestured to the creature, which flicked open a pair of quivering frills either side of its head and let out a hiss.
‘I’m not getting on that.’
‘Then you will turn around and go back the way you came.’
‘I’m not leaving until I see her.’
‘You are not welcome here.’ He surged forward, like he meant to scare me, and in a snap I’d drawn my knife and held it at the ready in the air between us, as though I had any idea how to actually wield it in a fight. He paused, his gaze flicking between my face and the blade. ‘Good will borrowed from Baba Yaga keeps you alive right now,’ he said, his voice low. ‘It will sour quickly. You will do as I say, or you will be treated as an invader.’
I assessed him critically. I couldn’t charm him, not looking like this. Slowly, I put away the blade. He gave a sharp nod, then swung back up onto the creature’s back and offered me a hand.
‘I will walk,’ I said firmly, and without having the slightest idea where I was going, I marched off into the valley, almost holding my breath as I waited to see if I’d gambled right, or if I would wind up slain from behind. There was a rush of wind behind me, and I tried to keep from cringing as the creature swooped through the air above me, before doubling back to hover just above my head, its great wings creating a hurricane of dirt and debris.
‘You are going the wrong way,’ its rider called.
‘Then you lead,’ I yelled back. ‘I can wander around myself while you hover above me, or you can make this whole process a lot quicker by helping me find my way. The sooner I see her, the sooner I leave.’
I kept walking. A few moments later, the creature touched down before me, and the rider jabbed his finger to my left. ‘That way.’
I thought about mock-curtsying. Decided against it and went for a beaming smile instead. ‘Oh, you’re so helpful. Thank you.’
The rider harangued me from the air as I walked in the direction he’d pointed out, occasionally swooping in to cut me off if I made a wrong turn or harass me to move along if I slowed my pace to look at something. I began to brace myself for whatever condition I was going to find Gwinellyn in. What would I do if she was a captive, perhaps even a slave? Her own fool fault for wandering this far into the Yawn in the first place. Why couldn’t she have just stuck to Cotus’s cabin?
We drew closer to the base of one of the strange, floating mountains, and I resisted the urge to duck my head and cringe down at the feeling that it was about to topple onto me. Even seeing now that it was indeed attached to the ground, it didn’t stop being impossible. The shape of it was ridiculous, at least a hundred times wider at the top than at the bottom. In the low light, I could see hints of the inconceivable staircase I’d seen in my vision winding around it, lined with lights that wouldn’t stay still. Music began to swoop around me, voices and strings and pipes rising and falling in a melody that made all the hair on my arms stand on end.
My minder landed before me again with much bluster, kicking up dirt and fluffing out wings. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered as he dismounted.
‘Alright, but I want my chicken foot back,’ I said, extending my palm. He frowned so deep he seemed almost cross-eyed, before plonking the charm onto my open palm, then striding away. I made to follow, but the winged lizard darted in front of me and bared its fangs, making that wicked hissing sound again. I stumbled a few steps back.
‘Friendly place,’ I muttered, folding my arms.
I waited. And waited. And waited. Tried to sneak around the lizard while it was poking its head into a bush, only to have it snap its jaws very close to my face in retaliation.
And then I heard Gwinellyn’s voice. Indistinct at first, but drawing closer.
‘Please Goras, I promise I had no idea.’
‘Stop interrogating her. You’ve asked the same question three times now.’
