Black Night (15 page)
One of the faeries came forward with the vine cord. I stepped back and conjured a ball of nightfire, holding it in front of me. The other four faeries made ready to fire their bows.
“You’re not putting those on me,” I said softly, and I felt Beezle on my shoulder twitch in surprise. I didn’t look at him. If I did, I would doubt myself, because I was sure he had a what-in-the-four-hells-do-you-think-you’re-doing look on his face.
“You are to be brought before the queen for judgment,” Ivin shouted.
“And I’ll go. But you will not treat me like a criminal,” I responded. I wondered if I could make the nightfire scatter, like a shotgun blast. Of course, maybe now was not the time to be contemplating new and exciting ways of using my power.
“In my eyes you
are
a criminal. You have trespassed on Amarantha’s kingdom with foul intentions,” Ivin responded.
are
a criminal. You have trespassed on Amarantha’s kingdom with foul intentions,” Ivin responded.
I drew my power around me like a cloak, pushed it up and out so that all in the clearing could feel it. I wanted them to know just who they were messing with. All the faeries took a little sidling step backward, not a lot, but just enough for me to know that they felt my magic, and it gave them pause.
“You will not bind my hands,” I repeated. “You will treat me with all due respect accorded to an ambassador from Lucifer’s kingdom.”
“I could kill you before you wielded your spell,” Ivin said, and he pulled his bowstring tighter.
I narrowed my eyes at him and pushed more power into the ball of nightfire that hovered above my palm. “Care to try me?”
I knew that I put Ivin in a bad position. He was the authority here, a representative of the queen, and it would be difficult for him to back down in front of his men. On the other hand, my sympathy only went so far. I had enough sense to know that I needed to come to the queen on my own terms or else she would never respect me.
Everyone in the clearing was still. Ivin and I had our eyes locked on each other, each waiting for the other to make a move. The faerie who had approached me with the vine cord seemed to be holding his breath. I wanted to look at Nathaniel, to see if he would help me if it came down to a firefight, but I didn’t want to release Ivin from my gaze.
A minute passed, two. I readied my power. He wasn’t going to give in. I wondered how many of them I could take down, and if I could avoid ending up looking like a pincushion filled with arrows.
Ivin abruptly dropped his bow. The other faeries paused a moment, as if in astonishment, and then dropped their weapons to their sides.
He gave me a little bow. “Welcome to the kingdom of Queen Amarantha, Ambassador Black. We would be happy to escort you to our queen.”
I closed my hand and the ball of nightfire disappeared. I gave Ivin a regal nod. “Would you please unbind the hands of my escort?”
Ivin looked like it would pain him to do such a thing, but since he’d already embarked down this path he had to see it through. He nodded at one of the other faeries and the cord on Nathaniel’s wrists was cut. Nathaniel gave the faerie who had fought him in the woods a look of venom. If I were that guy, I would avoid being caught alone at night by Nathaniel.
Nathaniel came to my side. The leader stepped around us, another faerie next to him, and indicated that we should follow them through the woods. We walked behind them in silence.
Even though Ivin had spoken the correct words and released Nathaniel, it still felt like we were prisoners. Two faeries walked in front of us, one behind and one on either side. Their weapons had been returned to their backs but all five faeries were tense and watchful. It was clear that they didn’t trust us and that any false move on our part would result in someone getting bloody.
The terrain did not improve significantly as we moved away from the swamp. The woods became thicker, the trees larger. The way that we followed didn’t really seem like a path. There was no tramped-down dirt to indicate the crossing of many feet. Gigantic roots jutted from the ground; large branches reached into our way. Small bushes with prickly thorns scratched and caught at my clothes.
The faeries leapt lightly from root to rock, easily avoiding creeping branches and reaching thorns. They seemed to slide through the woods like water. I was more like a stumbling rhinoceros. I tripped over every obstacle, got grabbed by every jutting piece of greenery. After about twenty minutes I was sweating like a pig under my winter overcoat.
I might technically approach Amarantha like an ambassador, but I was certainly not going to look like one. I don’t generally think of myself as vain or girly, but I was sweaty, bruised and covered in dried mud from head to toe. Nobody wants to appear before a queen like that. I shuddered to think of what my hair looked like.
We walked for what seemed like an hour. After I’d tripped over my nine hundredth tree root, I decided to break the silence.
“How much longer?” I asked Ivin.
He looked back at me. “The court of Queen Amarantha is approximately a day’s walk from here.”
I stared at him. “A day? Are you crazy? I can’t take a day to walk to court. For chrissakes, Nathaniel and I can fly. Surely there’s a quicker way than walking.”
“You can fly but we cannot,” he said. “You entered the queen’s kingdom at the very borders of her authority. It is not my fault that you chose to come that way.”
“Believe me, it’s not a choice I would have made if I had known,” I grumbled. “What about a portal?”
“We do not have the ability to create portals. That is solely the province of your kind,” he said.
“Then Nathaniel can make one. This is ridiculous. Do you seriously think that I am going to . . .” I trailed off as the ground beneath me trembled and all the faeries went still. “What is it now?”
The leader looked alarmed. “We must go now. As quickly as you can, follow me.”
“What is it?” I asked again, but all the faeries had disappeared into the brush.
The ground shook. I heard something chittering and clicking in the darkness of the trees. It sounded like several legs thumped on the ground. Dead leaves crackled and twigs snapped as the creature approached. There was a heavy scrape of furred body on bark as it pushed through the woods.
“That sounds like a—” Beezle began, but I cut him off.
“Don’t say it. It’s not allowed,” I said, and I pushed my wings out. I have a mild to moderate case of arachnophobia. If that thing was what I thought it was, then I would probably pass out right there and wake up to find myself in a cocoon hanging from a tree. “Come on.”
Nathaniel and I flew up toward the top canopy of trees, but the branches were tightly woven and it was impossible to get above the tree line. My clothes and wings snagged on everything and my face was horribly scratched after a few minutes.
The chittering and clicking came closer. Nathaniel looked at me in alarm.
“We can’t get through,” he said.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I muttered. “Beezle, can you squeeze through here and try to get above the trees, maybe find a place where we can fit through?”
Beezle looked at me doubtfully. “I can try. But how will I direct you from up there? You’ll never hear me, and you certainly won’t be able to see me.”
Nathaniel broke a small branch off one of the trees. He snapped it in half, muttered a word, and the ends of each branch started to glow.
“Take this,” he said, handing it to Beezle. “It will send a signal to us and guide us to where you are.”
“Magical GPS,” Beezle said, and he sounded impressed. “Okay, don’t get eaten by the giant sp—”
“Don’t say it,” I repeated. “Just go, and be careful.”
“I’d rather go up than down,” Beezle said, and as he disappeared into the branches, I had to agree.
The creature-that-shall-not-be-named in the woods seemed to have paused. We still couldn’t see it but it seemed frighteningly close. The air was dense with a strange green miasma that slowly filled the clearing. I wondered if the gas was emanating from the creature, or if it was yet another obstacle generated by the forest for me to deal with. Amarantha had a pretty effective defensive system here in the outlands. I’d probably appreciate it more if her system would stop trying to eat me.
“What do you think?” I asked Nathaniel.
“I think we should stay as high as possible,” he said grimly.
“I’m on board with that,” I said. “But I don’t think we should move too far until Beezle . . .”
I stopped as a wave of dizziness overtook me and I almost fell out of the tree. I rested my head against the bark for a minute, then resecured my grip on the branch I was seated on. It didn’t seem to help. Nausea rose up in my stomach and I gagged, trying not to boot.
“What is the matter?” Nathaniel asked. His eyes scanned the immediate area. The creature seemed to have either fallen asleep or left, because there wasn’t a sound to be heard.
Sweat trickled down my face and spine. My T-shirt was uncomfortably wet in a few moments. I folded myself over the branch so that I rested on it from face to belly, my legs straddling it like a horse. I turned my head to one side and tried to breathe through my nose. Unfortunately, breathing seemed to make it worse. My stomach twisted in knots of pain, and my chest felt tight.
“Are you sick?” Nathaniel asked. He floated down to my side, his face level with mine and his body hanging below as he flapped his wings gently in place.
I nodded a very tiny nod and closed my eyes. Looking at him hanging there was making me feel sicker.
He frowned. “It must be this fog. It’s affecting your human body.”
“Great,” I said through clenched teeth. “As if I don’t have enough to deal with. Now there’s poison gas.”
“We must get you away from here before it affects your brain,” he said.
“Bad news,” I said. “My brain’s already affected. It’s doing the tarantella with my stomach.”
Just then the creature began to move again, and it seemed to be moving a lot faster than it had before. Nathaniel reached for me.
“Carefully . . . unless . . . you . . . want . . . puke . . . all . . . over . . . your . . . jacket,” I slurred. My tongue felt heavy in my mouth and it was getting harder to think.
“I will risk it,” he said, and lifted me off the branch. He placed my head on his shoulder like I was a baby and put my arms around his neck. “Wrap your legs around my stomach and don’t let go.”
“Ooookay.”
I just wanted to go to sleep. I could hear, in a far and echoey way, the resumed chittering and clacking of the monster in the woods. It just didn’t have any urgency for me anymore. Sleep was the thing. Sleep was good.
“Madeline, do not go to sleep,” Nathaniel ordered.
“Tired,” I murmured.
“Do not go to sleep. You must listen to me. I am your husband.”
“Not yet, you aren’t,” I said, or maybe I thought it. It was hard to remember how to talk.
The monster crashed into the clearing. I heard branches breaking and the high-pitched whistle it emitted as it saw us. From my resting place on Nathaniel’s shoulder I could see his eyes grow wide.
“Hold very tight,” he said, and he let go of me so that his arms were free. I hung off the front of his body like a baby gorilla. “I must attempt to fight this creature.”
“Is it a giant spider?” I mumbled.
“Yes,” Nathaniel said, and then he threw a bolt of lightning at it.
The lightning sizzled as it hit the spider’s skin and the clearing filled with the scent of ozone. The spider screeched in anger and thumped its legs on the ground.
“Did that help?” I asked.
“No. Do not let go,” Nathaniel repeated, and he began to try to fly away from the creature.
Pretty quickly he came up against the same problem that we’d had before—the woods were too dense to fly. He hadn’t made any kind of headway and the creature was coming up on us with alarming speed. I looked over Nathaniel’s shoulder and wished I hadn’t.
The spider was fourteen feet tall, with long, tufted gray hair and about a million spinning red eyes. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep for weeks if we got out of this alive.
“Portal?” I asked.
“The elements here are not correct,” Nathaniel said, turning to face the spider and lowering to the ground. “The trees would suppress it. We need an open clearing.”
“Where’s Beezle?” I asked, and slipped from his shoulders to the ground. I landed and sprawled at his feet just as the spider came close enough for me to smell the stink of its blood-scented breath.
“I told you to hold on,” he said, and blasted the spider with nightfire.
The animal reared back, emitted a high-pitched screech. Its teeth clicked together as it retreated a few feet and hissed at us.
I looked up at Nathaniel from my prone position in the dirt. Now that we were away from the cloud of green gas, I was feeling a little better. The bands of tightness around my chest loosened and some of the nausea subsided.
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