Silver Borne

Chapter 13

SAMUEL STARTED TO SAY SOMETHING TO ZEE WHEN the woman he held opened her eyes, which were green again. She gave us all a bewildered look, as if she could not imagine how she'd gotten where she was.
I knew exactly how she felt.
As soon as he saw that she was awake, Samuel set her down with careful haste. "I'm sorry, Ari. You were falling . . . I wouldn't have touched - "
I had never in my life seen anything like it. Samuel, the son of a Welsh bard, who shared his father's gift for words, stammering like an infatuated teenager.
She grabbed Samuel's sweatshirt and looked up at him in utter astonishment. "Samuel?"
He stepped away from her, but stopped short of pulling the shirt from her grasp. "I can't give you space unless you let me go," he told her.
"Samuel?" she said, and, though it hadn't caught my notice before, I realized that her voice had changed sometime in the middle of her panic attack, and sounded way too young for the late-middle-age face she wore. It was also lightly accented, some combination of British and Welsh or a related language. "I thought . . . I looked but I never could find you. You just disappeared and left me nothing. Not a shirt or a name."
He pulled away again, and this time she let him go. Free, he retreated to the damaged door that separated my office from the garage. "I'm a werewolf."
Ariana nodded and took two steps forward. "I did notice that when you killed the hounds who had come for me." There was a hint of humor in her voice. Good, I thought. Any woman I'd allow to have Samuel would have to have a sense of humor. "The fangs gave it away - or maybe the tail. You saved me again - and then you left, and all I knew was your first name."
"I scared you," he said starkly.
She gave him a half smile, but clenched her hands. "Well, yes. But it seems I scared you worse because you ran away for . . . a very, very long time, Samuel."
He looked away from her gaze - the most dominant werewolf in the Tri-Cities, and he couldn't meet her gaze. Didn't he see that even if he scared her, she still wanted him?
She tried to take another step toward him and stopped. I could smell her terror, sharp and sour. She backed away from him with a little sigh.
"It is very good to see you again, Samuel," she said. "Because of you I am whole and here all these centuries after my father would have destroyed me. Instead, his body long ago fed his beasts and the trees of his forests."
Samuel bowed his head and, to the floor, he said, "I'm glad you are well - and apologize for causing your panic attack today. I should have stayed out . . ."
"Yes. Panic attacks. They can be pretty . . ." She looked at Zee, who was back in his chair looking as relaxed as if he'd spent the last ten minutes watching a very boring soap opera. "Did I hurt anyone, Siebold?"
"No," he said, folding his arms. "Just true-named our wolf, and told Mercedes and Jesse the story of the Silver Borne."
She looked at me, then at Jesse, maybe to see how frightened we were. Whatever she saw reassured her because she gave a shy smile.
"Oh, that's good. Good." Her shoulders relaxed, and she turned her attention back to Samuel. "I don't have them often anymore. Not at all with mortal canines. It's just the fae dogs, the magic ones - black dogs and hounds - that set me off. Only when I am overcome with - " She bit her lip.
"Fear?" Samuel suggested, and she didn't answer. She also had left off werewolves, I noticed.
"I am glad to see that your magic has returned," he said. "You thought it was gone."
She took a deep breath. "Yes. And for a while I was glad of it." She looked at me. "And that has bearing on the present situation. You are Samuel's friend, Mercedes?"
"And mate of the local Alpha werewolf - Jesse's father," I told her. I could hardly tell her that Samuel was single - that was a little too obvious. I saw that it mattered to her that Samuel didn't belong to me.
"You were going to - " I was so caught up in matchmaking that I almost flubbed it then and there. I shut my mouth and grabbed Jesse's hand.
" - help us find Gabriel." Jesse completed my sentence for me.
Ariana didn't move like a human at all when she came back to where we sat, with her chair in hand; she moved like a . . . wolf, bold and graceful and strong. Without a glance at Samuel, she sat down.
"Ask her about the thing the fairy queen wants," I told Jesse.
"Zee said she wants the Silver Borne," Ariana said. "That is the object of power I built for my father - although it never quite worked as the one who commissioned it would have liked. For many years I thought I had destroyed all my magic by making it." She closed her eyes and smiled. "I lived as a human, except for my long life span. I married, had children . . ." She glanced at Samuel, who was looking over our heads and out the window. His face was composed, but I could see the pulse beating fast in his throat.
Ariana continued her story quickly. "It took me nearly a century to make the connection between my lack of magic and the Silver Borne."
She gave me a wry smile. "I know. I had no magic anymore, and the last thing I made was something that was supposed to eat magic. You'd think I'd have made the connection. But all I knew was that it wasn't finished . . . and I couldn't remember how far I'd gotten when my father called the wolves. After a while it was not as important to me - it was only a broken thing that did nothing. Someone stole it, and I thought, good riddance. I left it to them, and after a few months my magic returned. It was then that I first understood I'd succeeded, in part. It does consume fae magic - but mostly just the magic of the person who currently possesses it."
"Why would a fairy queen want it, then?" I asked, then added a belated, "Jesse?"
"It eats fae magic, Mercy," said Zee. "How easy to change a formidable opponent to someone more vulnerable than a human - at least a human knows he has no power. Dueling is still allowed among the fae."
"Or maybe she doesn't really understand what it does," suggested Ariana. "She could believe it does as it was built to do: take power from one fae and give it to another. I've heard the stories - and I do not bother to correct them. Now I have answered a question, I have one for you. Mercy, did Phin give that book to you?"
I took in a breath to answer, and Jesse clamped her hand over my mouth and jumped in. "It would work better if you ask me," she said. "Then it would be less likely that Mercy breaks her word." She dropped her hand. "Did Phin give you the book?"
"But what does the book have to do with it?"
"Glamour," said Samuel suddenly. "By all that's holy, Ari, how did you manage to do that? You disguised that thing as a book, and you gave it to your grandson?"
"He is mostly human," she answered him without looking his way. "And I told him to keep it locked away so it wouldn't eat the magic he has."
"What if he'd sold it?" I asked. "Jesse?"
"It is my blood that it was born in," Ariana said. "It finds its way back to me eventually. Jesse, please ask her. Did Phin give you the book?"
"No. I might have bought it if I could have afforded - " I stopped talking because she slumped down and put both hands over her face.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Ariana said, hiccuping and wiping her face with her hands. Samuel surged toward her, then stopped where he was. She'd flinched, just a little.
"It's just been such a . . . I was so sure Phin was dead - that they'd killed him trying to get it, and it would be my fault." She wiped her eyes again. "I'm not usually like this, but Phin is . . . I adore Phin. He is so much like my son who I lost a long time ago . . . And I thought he was dead."
"Now you know he lives?" Samuel asked.
"In fire or in death," Jesse said, understanding it before any of the rest of us did. "That's what the fairy queen said. That if she killed Mercy, or if they burned it, it would reveal itself. But if it still belongs to Phin . . ."
"If they had killed him, the Silver Borne would have revealed itself to them," Ariana agreed. "They wouldn't still be looking for it."
"Why did you make it that way?" asked Jesse.
Ariana smiled at her. "I didn't. But things of power . . . evolve around the limits they are given. That's why, even though I thought it did nothing, I kept it with me. Because even unfinished, it was a thing of power."
"How did you figure out that it . . . Oh." There was comprehension in Jesse's voice.
"Right. It's a very old thing, and many of its owners have died in various ways. The fire thing came later." Her face grew contemplative. "And quite spectacularly."
"Aren't you its owner?" Jesse asked.
"Not if I want to keep my magic - I'm only its maker. That's why it's called the Silver Borne."
"Ariana means silver in Welsh." Samuel sat down on the floor and leaned against the end of the nearest metal shelving unit. He'd had a rough couple of days, too - but I hoped that Ariana's obvious fear of him wouldn't send him sliding back into despair.
"Jesse," I said. "Ask her how we find Gabriel."
"What did you bring me that belongs to this young man?" Jesse handed her a white plastic bag. "It's a sweater he loaned me when I was cold."
"Phin told me that his magic was that he could sometimes feel things from objects," I said. "Things like how old an object is. Psychometry."
"Something he inherited from me." Ariana pulled the sweater out and put it against her face. "Oh dear. This won't work."
"Why not?" Samuel asked. "It is his. I can smell his scent on it from here."
"I don't work off scents," she told him, her eyes on the sweater. "I work off ties, the threads that bind us to those things that are ours." She looked at Jesse. "This sweater means far more to you, as a gift of love, than it did to him when he wore it. So I can use it to find you, but not him." She hesitated. "Does he feel the same way about you?"
Jesse blushed and shook her head. "I don't know."
"Give me your hand," said the fae woman.
Jesse reached out and Ariana held it - and smiled like a wolf scenting her prey. "Oh yes, you are a lodestone." She turned to look at Zee. "With her I can find him. He is that way." She pointed toward the back of the garage.
* * *
WE LOADED INTO ADAM'S TRUCK BECAUSE ZEE'S TRUCK wouldn't hold us all - and Zee drove. Ariana sat in the front and Samuel sat behind Zee, as far as he could get from her in the big truck.
The sound of the big engine brought a smile to Zee's face; he appreciates modern technology more than I do.
"Adam has good taste," was all he said.
Looking for Gabriel was frustrating because it took us a while to figure out that we had to cross the river, and the roads didn't always lead where she was pointing. Adam had a map in his jockey box, and Samuel used it to figure out how to work our way around to the most likely destinations.
We ended up in an empty, flat meadow up a winding dirt road (not marked on Adam's map) that might have been an hour's drive from the Tri-Cities if we'd known where we were going in the first place. There was a fence around the field we'd all had to climb over. Maybe ten years ago it might have held in livestock, but the barbwire drooped and T posts were tipped over. Near where we'd parked the car were the remnants of someone's old cabin.
Ariana, looking out of place in her cardigan and stretch-knit pants, stopped in the middle of the field between a thatch of bunchgrass and a couple of sagebrush.
"Here," she said, sounding worried.
"Here?" Jesse said incredulously.
I took advantage of our halt to start picking cheatgrass out of my socks. If I'd realized we'd be running around out there, I'd have worn boots - and a thicker jacket.
"The fairy queen has set up her Elphame," Zee observed soberly.
"That's bad?" I asked.
"Very bad," he said. "It means she is stronger than I thought - and probably she has more fae at her command than we suspected if she still has the ability to build a home."
"How could she have done that here?" asked Ariana. "She must be able to tap into Underhill to create her own land. The gates to the Secret Place have been lost to us for centuries - and Underhill never was in this land."
I looked at Zee. I couldn't help it because I'd been to Underhill - and then sworn to silence.
"Underhill was wherever it chose to be," Zee said. "The reservation is no more than ten miles away as the crow flies. Most of the fae who live there aren't the powerful among the fae - but there are a lot of us, more than appear on the government's rolls. There is power in that kind of concentration." He was careful not to say that the reservation had reopened a path or two to Underhill.
Ariana held her hand out, palm down, and closed her eyes briefly. "You're right, Zee. There is power here that tastes of the Old Place. I had wondered why she bothered to keep Phin alive when killing him would have been the most logical path for her to take. She outsmarted herself when she took him to Elphame."
"Fairy queens follow rules," agreed Zee. "Mortals who are taken to the Elphame cannot be killed or permanently harmed - it's part of the magic of building a place apart."
Ariana gave him a little smile. "My Phin must be too human for her to kill. I wonder if she knew that when she took him to her lair? If he is human, she cannot, of her own volition, release him for a year and a day."
"Does that mean she can't kill Gabriel?" Jesse rubbed her arms to keep warm. "And that we can't get him for a year and a day either?"
"She can't kill Gabriel either." It was Samuel who answered. "That doesn't mean she won't hurt or enthrall them. Fairy prisoners can be rescued by stealth, by battle, or by bargaining."
"Bargaining? Like in the song 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia' but with a fairy?" I asked. It seemed to me that I'd heard a similar tale with fairies in it.
"Right," Samuel agreed. "It can be a contest - usually musical, because fairy queens tend to be musically talented. But there are stories of footraces or swimming contests. My father has a wonderful old song about a young man who challenged a fairy to an eating contest and won."
"How do we get in?" asked Jesse.
"The only way I know of getting into Elphame is by following the queen in," Ariana said.
"I might be able to open a way," said Zee. "I think I can manage to keep her from knowing what I've done. But I'll have to stay here and hold the door open - and I won't be able to keep it open forever. An hour at most and you have to be out. If the door closes . . . As it does in Underhill, time passes differently in Elphame. If the door closes, even if you manage to escape, there is no telling how much time will have passed when you get out."
"Okay," said Jesse.
"Oh, no," I said. "Not you, Jess. No."
"I'll be the safest person there," she told me. "I'm strictly a mortal human - they can't kill me."
"They can make you want to be dead," said Samuel.
"You need me to find Gabriel." Jesse set her chin. "I'm coming."
I looked at Ariana, who nodded. "The Elphame is entirely under the control of its maker. If we want to find your young man quickly and get him out, we'll need her to do it."
"Then let me call Adam and get the wolves." I should have stopped at Sylvia's to pick up something that Ariana could have found Gabriel with that wasn't living. I didn't want to cause Adam's pack any more trouble than I already had - but I wanted even more to get Gabriel and Phin out of the fairy's hold and still keep Jesse safe.
Ariana sucked in a quick breath. "I am sorry," she said. "Samuel is . . . I could not do it with strange werewolves. If it were just fear, I would do it. But the panic attacks can be dangerous to anyone around me." She looked at Zee. "Could they find them without me, do you think?"
"No," said Zee. "If I have to stay out here, then they will need you to keep them from being lost. Moreover, I think that the wolves might be a mistake. Samuel is old enough and powerful in his own right - I think he could resist the will of one such as a fairy queen. But all of the wolves . . . The chances are too great that she would turn our own against us. If she turns you or Jesse, Ariana and Sam can still get you out. If you go in with the pack, even one wolf who turns would mean death."
"It's all right, Mercy," said Jesse. "I'm not helpless, and I . . . Would you be able to wait out here if it were Dad in there?"
"No."
"Are you ready?" asked Zee.
"All right," I said, painfully aware that Adam would not be happy with me, but Jesse was right. She was probably the safest among us. "Let's get them out of here."
"Good," said Zee - and he dropped his glamour without fanfare or drama.
One moment he was the tallish skinny old man with a little rounded belly and age spots on his neck and hands, and the next he was a tall, sleek warrior with skin dark as wet bark. Sunlight tinted his hair gold. It hung in a thick braid that flowed over one shoulder and hung lower than his belt. The last time I'd seen him, his pointed ears had been pierced many times, and he had worn bone earrings in the piercings. There were no decorations at all.
His was a body that didn't belong in the jeans and plaid flannel shirt he still wore. The clothing fit him as well in his current shape as they had in the one I was used to. I supposed that made sense because it was the Zee I knew who was the illusion and this man, and his clothes, that were real.
Zee's true face was uncanny - beautiful, proud, and cruel. I remembered the stories I'd found about the Dark Smith of Drontheim. Zee had never been the kind of fairy who cleaned houses or rescued lost children. He'd been one to avoid if you could and to treat very, very courteously if you couldn't. He'd mellowed a little with age and didn't disembowel anyone who displeased him anymore. Not that I'd seen anyway.
"Wow," said Jesse. "You are beautiful. Scary. But beautiful."
He looked at her a moment, then said, "I have heard Gabriel say the same of you, Jesse Adamstochter. It was meant as a compliment, I believe." He turned to Ariana. "You'll have to leave the glamour behind. The only glamour that works in Elphame is the queen's, and if you wait until the Elphame rips it from you, it will alert those inside that they have an intruder."
She clenched her fists and glanced at Samuel and away.
"I've seen your scars," he said. "I am a doctor and a werewolf. I saw those wounds when they were new and raw - scars do not bother me. They are the laurels of the survivor."
Like Zee, she didn't bother with theatrics. Without glamour, her skin was a warmer color than Zee's and several shades lighter. It was beautiful against silver-lavender hair that was no more than a finger-length long anywhere and floated out from her scalp more like plumage than hair - a lot like Jesse's current hairstyle. Ariana's clothes altered when her glamour dropped as well, into a simple knee-length dress of an off-white color with a handkerchief hem.
She wasn't conventionally beautiful - her face was too inhuman for that, with eyes that were too big and a nose too small for humanity. Her scars weren't as bad as they'd appeared when I'd seen them before. They looked older and less angry . . . but there were a lot of them.
"We are ready," Samuel said, looking at Ariana with a hunger that had nothing to do with his stomach.
Zee reached behind his head and drew his dagger, dark-bladed and elegant in its deadly simplicity, from beneath the collar of his shirt. Either it was magic or a sheath, I couldn't tell, and with Zee it could be either one. He used it to make a single clean cut on his forearm. For a moment, nothing happened, and then blood, dark and red, welled up. He knelt and let the blood drip into the dirt.
"Mother," he said. "Hear me, your child."
He put the hand of his uninjured arm into the soil and mixed his blood into the powdery earth. In German he whispered, "Erde, geliebte Mutter, dein Kind ruft. Schmecke mein Blut. Erkenne deine Schopfung, gewahre Einlass."
Magic made my feet tingle and my nose itch - but nothing else happened. Zee stood up and counted off four paces before he sliced his other forearm.
Kneeling, he bowed his head, and this time there was power in his voice. "Erde mein, lass mich ein."
Blood slid over his skin and down onto the backs of his hands, which were flat on the ground. "Gibst mir Mut!" he shouted - and rolled his hands over, wiping the blood on the ground.
"Trinkst mein Blut. Erkenne mich." He leaned forward and put his weight on his arms. First his hands, then his arms sank into the ground until they were buried past the wounds he'd given himself. He leaned down until his mouth was nearly in the dirt, and said quietly, "offne Dich."
The ground under my feet vibrated, and a crack appeared between the place Zee sat and the place where he'd mixed his blood with the soil.
"Erde mein," he said. The ground quivered with the vibrations of his voice, which sounded darker, as if he were dragging it out of a deep cavern. "Lass mich ein. Gibst mir Glut." He put his forehead on the ground. "Trinke mein Blut. Es quillt fur Dich hervor. offne mir ein Tor!"
There was a flash, and a large square of dirt just disappeared, leaving in its place a stone staircase that went straight down for eight steps, then began to turn upon its inner edge. I couldn't see any farther because a thick fog rose from the depths of the hole and obscured the stairway about ten feet down.
Zee jerked his hands out of the ground. There was dirt on his arms, but no wounds and no blood. He raised one hand and held it out to Ariana, giving her a stone that glowed.
"I can hold it for about an hour," Zee told us. "Ariana can use the stone to find the way back to me. If you see the light begin to flicker, it means I am at the end of my strength, and you need to get back here. So long as this door is open, the time in the Elphame will sync with the time outside. If this door closes, you might get out, but I don't know when you'll find yourselves if you do."
* * *
SAMUEL LED THE WAY DOWN, FOLLOWED BY ARIANA. I sent Jesse ahead of me and took up the rear. The light above us grew quickly dimmer until we were traveling in virtual darkness. Jesse stumbled, and I caught her before she could fall.
"Here," said Ariana. "Put your hand on my shoulder, Jesse."
"I'll put mine on yours," I told Jesse. "Samuel, can you see anything?"
"I can now," he said. "It's getting lighter ahead."
"Lighter" was a relative term, but the ten stairs we went down I could see. The stairs ended in a dirt tunnel that was lit by gems embedded in the ground that were as big around as oranges. The ceiling of the tunnel was about six inches lower than Samuel was tall, and the roof and sides were thick with tree roots.
"There aren't any trees above us," I said. "And even if there were, we've come down a long way past where I'd have thought there would be roots."
"She has a forest lord in her court," said Ariana, reaching to the side where strings of roots made a rough curtain for the dirt wall beyond. The roots moved toward her, caressing her fingers briefly before falling back where they had been.
"What kind of fae are you, Ariana?" asked Jesse. "Are you a forest lord, too? Or a gremlin like Zee, because you can work silver?"
"There are no others like Zee," she told us. "He is unique. Almost all fae can work with silver to one extent or another - silver loves fae magic. But you are right: there are iron-kissed fae in my background, and steel holds no terrors for me."
We were talking quietly, but I wasn't too worried about being discovered. There was a feeling of . . . emptiness here that told me that there was no life other than the roots that tangled in my hair and tripped my feet.
"We - " I stopped, remembering that I wasn't supposed to discuss anything about the fairy queen. Had I already broken my word? Did it matter when we were storming the castle?
"Jesse," I said, deciding to play it safe, "we haven't planned anything at all about the rescue."
"There's no planning when you're running through Elphame," said Samuel, who was walking bent over, with one hand up to ward off the roots. "It's not that kind of place. Ariana will lead us to her grandson and Gabriel, and we'll try to get out by coping with anything that happens along the way."
"That sounds . . . simple," I said.
"It could be simple," Ariana told me. "She cannot be expecting visitors - there just aren't very many fae who could open a back entrance into a fairy queen's lair. Thralls will not react to us - they know nothing and are not much more than automata who follow the queen's orders. We may be able to find Phin and Gabriel and leave with them before anyone realizes there is something wrong."
"Should we have brought - " Ariana's fingers touched my lips.
"Best we not talk about what that one so desires in her lair," she told me. "I expect she might hear that. And no. It is powerful, and even if it will not do as she wants, it will still do great harm in the wrong hands."
"All right," I said.
Samuel raised his head. "Best we not talk anymore at all. I'm starting to pick up the scent of people now."
I could smell them, too, once he'd pointed it out. We were coming upon more-traveled ways. The loose dirt of the floor became packed earth, and the roots thinned and were replaced with rough-cut square blocks as the dirt floor became cobbles, and the ceiling rose so Samuel could stand up straight again.
There were already other tunnels joining ours.
I caught the scent before Samuel, but I think it was only because the woman came upon us from behind, and I was walking last. It didn't matter, though, because I only had time to whirl around, and she was upon us.
She wore a torn jacket and filthy jeans and carried a large wooden cutting board in both her hands. She walked right into me and bounced off. When she tried to walk around me, I blocked her a second time.
"Take this to the kitchen," she said, without looking up at me. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, all of her attention on the board she held. Her hair hung in ragged clumps, and there was dirt on her knuckles. Around her neck was a thin silver collar. "The kitchen, child. The kitchen. Take this to the kitchen."
I moved out of her way, and she all but sprinted past us.
"She's not taking care of her thralls," said Ariana disapprovingly.
"Thrall?" asked Jesse.
"Slave," I answered. "You know when someone is enthralled with a movie or a boyfriend - that's from the same root word."
"Follow her," said Ariana. "The kitchen should be at the heart of Elphame."
We jogged after her, passing by a young man in a police uniform, a woman in a jogging suit, and an older woman carrying a steaming teapot, all wearing silver collars, and all moving with unnatural intentness. The floor switched from cobbles to stone tiles, and the ceiling rose again until it was fifteen feet or more above our heads.
The gems that had lit the passage we had been in were lining the walls and dangling from the ceiling from something that could equally well have been fine silver wire or spiderwebs. Whatever it was, it didn't look strong enough to hold them. Samuel's head would hit the lower gemstones once in a while, sending them swinging.
We came into the kitchen, which could have been imported from a 1950s TV set - a very large cooking set, since there were two six-burner stoves in a room that was bigger than my now-deceased trailer. I looked around, but none of the people in the kitchen was Donna Reed or June Cleaver . . . or Gabriel Sandoval, either. The glistening white appliances were rounded in a manner my eyes found odd, and the three refrigerators had silver latching handles and Frigidaire stenciled in silver across the top. People with silver collars were preparing food and drink - and didn't seem to notice our presence at all. The woman we'd followed here put the cutting board on the counter next to one of the sinks and began to fill the sink with water by working the hand pump that it had instead of a faucet.
"Excuse me," said Ariana, walking up to a man who was stirring something in a pot that looked like oatmeal.
"Stir the pot seventy times seven," he said.
"Where are they keeping the prisoners?" Samuel asked, putting the push into his voice that the really dominant wolves could. His voice echoed oddly in the room.
Slowly, all the action in the kitchen came to a stop. One by one, the six people wearing silver circlets around their throats turned to look at Samuel. The man Ariana had spoken to stopped moving last. He pulled his spoon out of the pot and pointed to one of the seven rounded doorways. The others, one by one, pointed the same way.
"Forty-seven steps," the oatmeal stirrer said.
"Take the right tunnel," said a man who'd been chopping turnips.
"Eighteen steps and turn," said a girl kneading bread. "The key is on the hook. The door is yellow."
"Do not let them out," said a boy who looked about thirteen and had been filling glasses with water from a pitcher.
"Resume your tasks," said Samuel, and one at a time they did so.
"I think that's the creepiest thing I've ever seen," said Jesse. "Are we just going to leave these people here?"
"We're going to get Gabriel out and Phin," said Ariana. "And then we'll take this to the Gray Lords, who have forbidden the keeping of thralls. Only the fairy queen can release her thralls, and the Gray Lords are the only ones who have a chance of making her do that. In the Elphame, she rules utterly."
"What if she's enthralled Gabriel?"
"She won't have," said Ariana positively. "She promised Mercy, and breaking her promise would have dire consequences. And my Phin is protected against such a thing."
The path we took from the kitchen was less grand than the one we'd taken into it. The floor was made of those small white octagonal tiles with a line of black tiles running about a foot from either wall. Forty-seven paces from the kitchen, the tunnel widened into a small room. The black tiles formed a complicated Celtic knot in the center of the room. There were passageways that opened across from ours, and one to either side.
We took the one to the right. Here the floor was rough wooden planks that showed the marks of being hand hewn. It creaked a little under Samuel, who was the heaviest of us.
"Eighteen," he said, and there was a yellow door with an old-fashioned key hanging off a hook - the first door we'd seen in the Elphame.
Samuel took the key from the lock and opened the door.
"Doc?" said Gabriel. "What are you doing here?"
"Gabriel." Jesse pushed past Samuel.
Key in hand, Samuel followed her in. Ariana and I brought up the rear.
Gabriel was hugging Jesse. "What are all of you doing here? Did she get you, too?"
The room was white. White stone walls, white ceiling with clear crystals hanging down to light the room. The floors were made of a single slab of polished white marble. There were two beds with white bedding.
The only color in the room came from Gabriel and the man who was lying on one of the beds. He looked dreadful, and I'd never have recognized him if Ariana hadn't whispered his name.
Phin sat up slowly, as if his ribs hurt, and Ariana rushed to kneel beside his bed on one knee.
He frowned at her. "Who?"
"Grandma Alicia," she said.
He looked startled, then he smiled. "Has anyone ever told you that you don't look like anyone's grandmother? Is it a rescue, then? Like in the old stories?"
"No," said Samuel, who had turned to face the doorway. "It's a trap."
"Welcome to my home," said a familiar dark voice. "I'm so happy you came to call."
The woman who stood in the doorway of the cell was lovely. Her hair was dark smoke, pulled back in a complicated braid composed of many small plaits. It flowed down her back and dragged the ground like an Arabian show horse's tail and set off the porcelain of her skin and the rose of her lips.
She was looking at me. "I am so glad to have you in my home, Mercedes Thompson. I was just trying to call you on my cell when - imagine my surprise - I discovered that you were here. But you did not bring it." Having a fairy queen talking about cell phones almost was enough to make me laugh. Almost.
I raised my chin. By stealth, by strength, by bargain. "I am not such a poor bargainer, fairy queen. If I had brought it, we could not play."
She smiled, and her silver-gray eyes warmed. "By all means," she said. "Let us play."