Forming a circle, they had conferred. To fight not only a sorcerer, but a dragon, a man capable of thumbing his nose at time itself . . . the elves all agreed that this required an escalation.
Now, accompanied by the Elder who’d overseen this latest war effort and a trio of slim and lovely elves, Glenda spurred her mount through the swampland.
Their unicorns lifted hooves caked with mud, flinging up specks of the stinking stuff with each laborious step. Enchanted to repel soiling, the Elder’s robe maintained its shining white. The mounted elves, not being in the practice of draining their own children for frivolities, had a fine brown speckling ascending their legs.
Glenda took some satisfaction from this. She’d expected to find comfort among her own kind, but day by day, her shoulders grew tenser, and her jaw more tightly clenched. Her fellow elves, she had to admit, lacked the Church’s discipline. They relied on order, but seemed perfectly content to leave the humans to enforce it—for God’s sake, she was considered an aberration for setting out to join the war! An aberration, for doing the right thing. None of them would have taken a sword to Cameron’s throat. They’d rather sit back, file their nails, and let someone else pick up the blade.
And they’d looked at her so funnily when she scolded them for speaking in a forbidden language. Honestly. Likeshe’ddone something wrong.
Glenda was plucking small, stinging flies from the air with whiplash movements, funneling her anger, when the three elven guides halted their mounts. Through the bird calls and buzz of insects, she heard slurping. Something large was moving with slow ease through the swampy depths. Glenda peered about cautiously, but vine-choked trees clogged the landscape, ruining her visibility. Another elf inhaled sharply. Following his gaze, Glenda saw it. Visible through scarce gaps in the yellow-green foliage, an enormous shape rose and fell with the stride of its four legs.
The unicorns whinnied, fearful, as their riders kicked them into motion. From behind a screen of branch and leaf, Glenda watched the behemoth stop and lower itself.
They waded closer, and the shape resolved into a small cottage, built atop the gigantic, green-furred legs of a goat. No, not furred;leafed. The bestial parts of the dwelling erupted in a coat of vegetation. Glenda pictured the wood that must exist beneath those leaves, and shivered at its similarity to the sorcerer’s constructs.
The unicorns slogged toward the front steps, which hovered an inch above the swamp’s surface. Small, fat birds perched on the roof, overlooking the door. “Only the wounded woman may enter,” one called in an eerily artificial voice.
The other elves protested in synchronization, speaking over each other in their desire to correct the situation, but the birds screamed loud enough to silence them all. The same bird spoke again. “Only the wounded woman.”
Apologetically, all the elves looked to Glenda. Elder Beth held her silence, but Glenda knew that beneath her placid mask, she burned with fury at the dismissal.
With an anxiety born from the handful of Passionweed she’d snuck that morning, Glenda steered her mount closer and slipped down from it to the cottage steps, which creaked beneath her feet as she ascended. Glenda took a moment to appreciate the door’s wreath of yellow flowers before entering.
Inside sat a fat woman. She rocked gently in a carved chair, backlit by the glow of her stove, with pungent herbs dangling from the rafters above. One of her eyes was oddly hooded, its icy iris ever so slightly unfocused. She smiled, revealing a sharp tangle of teeth. Even her blue skin lookedoff, bruised, a shade too dark and too red.
“I can see someone has hurt you.” The gentle music of the witch’s voice made Glenda forget her disgust. “Have you come to be made whole?”
Glenda touched her face self-consciously. Her cheek no longer burned where the unicorn-turned-basilisk had vomited its acid, but her fingers could still trace the pits and welts. Before her departure, Cerulina had gently prompted her to smooth it out with magic. Elves commonly drained themselves for cosmetic enhancements, but Glenda had ignored her, wanting every resource available for this hunt. Now though, with this unprompted offer?
“If you could,” Glenda said softly, her eyes filling. “I’d appreciate it.”
The witch’s silver hair hung long and sleek. She drew it back in a quick knot, the motion exposing the scars that traced to her armpits, and beckoned Glenda closer.
“This will sting for a moment,” Domitia said, her words a lullaby that hid their meaning. Curiously soothed, Glenda nodded her acceptance. With a chanted sentence came acrawling sensation on her cheek, and the briefest flash of heat—then there was smooth skin beneath her questing fingers. Glenda couldn’t help herself; she cried aloud with glee. It had been terrible to realize that she’d lost not only her prey, but her looks.
The witch tilted her head, her lips parted in confusion. “That cost rather more than I thought.”
“Probably the head trauma.” Glenda hiccuped a laugh. “You might have cleaned that up, too. A man, he—” But she couldn’t continue. Tears came now, streaming down her cheeks. “He—damn it. Domitia, I’ve come to ask you for help.”
The mongrel witch nodded, rocking mildly in her chair. “I thought as much. Why don’t you draw up a cushion, and we can have ourselves a chat.”
CHAPTER 32
In Which Merulo’s Sister Is Very Intimidating and Large and Does Not Seem to Abide by Normal Social Standards. In Which that May Actually Work in My Favour, as I Am Realizing that Neither Do I.
And this is—COME ON, MOVE FASTER—this is where the train docks. Don’t EVER go inside the train, it’s nothing but rusted metal. Do you know what tetanus is? Do you know what a train is? A train is like a long car.”
I didn’t know what a car was, but lacked the heart to tell her.
Despite her imposing frame, her crooked nose (obviously healed from past violence), and those muscles, Hydna bounded about with the eager friendliness of a puppy. I’d stopped trying to shape my replies to please her, as everything I said—no matter how foolish or petulant—seemed to bring her delight. Most likely, I could thank Merulo for lowering her conversational standards.
“Moving right along now, this is—CAREFUL!” Hydna lunged at me, and I flinched, closing my eyes in brief cowardice, but she only yanked me back from the sinkholeI’d been about to step into. “You’re a delicate little thing, so use your eyes, eh?” was my rebuke, along with a shoulder-shattering clap on the back.
“I’m above the average height for men,” I said, pointlessly, for she’d already moved to the next attraction ofPoseidon’s Family Fun Resort. This section looked horrific, with its crumbling facades and time-bleached pigments bearing the ghostly afterimages of smiling aquatic creatures. When Merulo and I first arrived, we’d emerged in the section of the resort used for housing visitors. The tall, strange buildings radiated out from our newly designated library plaza for several blocks, before giving way to the amusement district.
It bewildered me that they’d built an underwater city solely for transient entertainment, though I didn’t doubt Hydna’s explanation. Mentioning this to Merulo proved to be a mistake, as he said, “Yes, I imagine thinking is a great effort for you,” then banished me to spend more time with his sister. Or rather to “provide that creature with whatever form of entertainment you see fit, so that I might be spared its company.”
“Hydna. Are you and Merulo not close?” I asked, remembering the exchange, then winced. I’d interrupted her explanation of a terrifying wheel that stretched many feet above us, complete with intermittently spaced chairs into which victims could be locked.
