Behind them was a nearly vertical, slippery slope of loose dirt, rocks, and roots. Attempting to climb it would only land them back where they started.
Before them was a long, endlessly dark stone tunnel.
They did not speak of what had passed. For Sy’s part, his headache was worse than ever, and he couldn’t seem to fully catch his breath. Anya seemed unhurt, though she did move stiffly.
They gathered their supplies along with their wits. Sy scanned Anya’s quiver for the glyphed arrow, but she wouldn’t show him her back. With swift, jerky motions, she pulled a tinder box out of her satchel, then reached for him.
He tensed, and she did, too. Her arm froze in midair. Not breaking his gaze, she slowly slipped the rowan branch from his rucksack. Then, with her knife, she stripped off the flowers and carved the cut end into strips, releasing a sweet-smelling sap. She reached beneath her jerkin, untucked her shirt, then started to rip into the linen.
He put a hand on her arm to stop her. She went rigid, her hawk’s gaze trained where he touched her. He removed the rag of his first shirt, ripped and bloodied, from his bag. He held it out to her.
After a moment, she took it, then ripped it to strips with her knife. She wrapped them around the branch, soaking them in sap.
She had made a torch. She lit it.
In the torchlight, she regarded him. “I know this place. The lightning-struck birch.”
“Thelightning-struck birch?”
“From Johanna’s map.” Her voice was acid. He found it a vast improvement over her stony silence. “Birch trees are almost never struck by lightning. There’s only one in the Lichtenwald. Which means we’re in Budgerigar Cavern. The mimic’s lair.” Briefly, she closed her eyes, pressed a gloved hand to her forehead. She spoke quietly, almost to herself. “Even infants know to stay away from here. I should have noticed. It’s like I can’t fuckingthink.”
At that, she slammed an elbow against the cavern wall.
Concerned for more reasons than one, he pulled her attention to what he currently found the most pressing matter. “And what exactly is the mimic?”
“A vile creature,” she answered with a sneer. “It can replicate the shape and sound of anything it sees. It plays tricks, lures things into this hole to eat them. Its preferred sustenance is brains.”
“Ah.” Sy rubbed his own aching forehead. “A blessing in disguise, perhaps.”
A humorless laugh escaped her. “It played us both for fools.”
So they had fought over a phantom.
But she hadn’t let him fall. She’d called out to him; she’d known by then that certain death awaited him in this cavern, and all she had to do was let him fall, let his desire take him. And she hadn’t.
Then her words caught up to him.
“If the mimic takes the shape of things it has seen,” he said slowly, “then that means, even if the phoenix we saw was the mimic – it has seen the phoenix.”
“It’s been near here,” she finished. Then she pressed her lips together. Yes, probably unwise to share insight with a rival, especially one who had just ruined her perfect kill shot.
What were those glyphs on her arrow? They weren’t written in blood. They could be as simple as a good luck charm, or as dangerous as another’s spell. Either way, he suspected they held the key to whatever Anya was hiding; to who she was working with, he realized. She hadn’t carved those glyphs herself.
To what made her skin stick to leaves and wood, turned her eyes a void, wracked her body with pain.
Perhaps, a key to deciphering a mite of the forest’s indecipherable magic.
He needed to examine that arrow. If he walked behind her, he might be able to slip it out of her quiver unnoticed.
He shouldered his pack. “Do you know the way out?”
“Lucrative though their hides surely are, I don’t often have occasion for hunting toads and newts.”
He tried to come up with a retort and, exhausted, failed. “What should we do?”
“We can only go forward. Straight into the mimic’s mouth.” She thought for a moment. “Tell me something about you no one else would know.”
Sy faltered. “What? Why?”
