Evanescent (15 page)

Chapter Sixteen

We spun through a cloud of smoke that felt way too much like the one that had brought us to Nerissette in the first place, and I flung my hand out for Mercedes. Wherever this tree was taking us I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to end up there by myself. Mercedes grabbed my hand tight in hers, and before I knew what was going on, the smoke opened up and dropped us onto the hard ground below. My ribs ached and bruises were already starting to form on my back from the beating I’d taken today, thanks to all the
helpful
magic I’d been forced to endure.

Peeling my eyes open slowly, I looked up and saw blue sky and fluffy white clouds floating over my head. One of them sort of looked like a bunny holding a spear and attacking an ogre. Or it could have just been a random shape. It all depended on how you turned your head. Right now I was definitely rooting for the bunny.

“Mercedes.” I coughed from all the smoke still trapped in my lungs. “Where are we?”

“Back at the castle,” Mercedes said quietly. “We ended up back at your stupid, ridiculous, burning palace.”

“Why?” I coughed again.

“I was hoping that it would work in reverse.” Mercedes sat up beside me, and I struggled to follow her train of thought.

“What would work in reverse?” I turned to her and froze as I saw the palace, my palace, or the smoking ruins of what had once been my palace, burning behind her.

The glass dome that had just been replaced was shattered again, looking like the open mouth of a giant glass creature with really bad teeth, and the remaining white marble was blackened and crumbling in uneven columns, showing the utter destruction beyond.

I turned to look at the rest of the palace grounds and felt tears prickling at the back of my eyes. Everything was destroyed. The grass was black with soot and there were huge ditches scored into the ground, gaping wounds along the body of the land the palace sat upon. The only thing still standing was a large, silver-leafed tree with black scorch marks wrapped along the trunk—the Silver Leaf Tree. The Tree of Life. Mercedes’s tree.

“I don’t understand,” Mercedes said. Her eyes were wide with shock, and tears ran down her cheeks. She reached up to swipe at them and then slammed her fists against the patch of ground that we were sitting on.

Immediately I saw the grass begin to fade from black to a pale gray and then transform to a light green that darkened until it was the color of a four-leaf clover. “Mercedes?”

“How could it not have worked?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” I watched as she slammed her fists down again, and the color bled from one blade of grass to another as if her energy was healing the land around her. “What were you trying to do?”

“I was trying to take us home!” Her shoulders sagged in disappointment. “Dryads can use the trees as portals, like you use the runes in the palace. We can travel from one part of Nerissette to another by using the trees. If you already know where you’re going and can visualize the place, the trees can take you there. And I wanted to go home.”

“But…” My heart broke at the fact that she had been so desperate to get home that she’d been willing to leave Winston and all the rest of our friends behind while she made her escape.

“According to all of the other dryads it only works inside Nerissette. They’ve never been able to use the portals to travel anywhere else. Not even the Borderlands. Only, the thing is, I realized that none of Nerissette’s dryads
have ever been to the Borderlands
. They can’t visualize it. So I thought it could be that—”

“The reason they can’t transport anywhere else isn’t that the trees are incapable of transporting them but that they can’t manage to visualize where they want to be enough to control the magic?” I sighed as my brain tried to wrap itself around what I’m pretty sure was more than one violation of basic science.

“Exactly.” Mercedes pushed herself up to stand.

“And you thought if you asked the portal to take us home that it could break through the wall between this world and ours? Oh, Mer.” I shook my head at her, disappointed.

“I thought it was worth the chance, but instead of taking us
there
the stupid tree got confused and brought us
here
.”

“I don’t think it got confused at all.” I grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face her tree. “You asked the magic to bring you home, and it did. It brought you back to the tree you claimed as your own.”

“I only claimed it temporarily. Just until we go home. Besides, this isn’t what I wanted. This isn’t where we’re supposed to be.” She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at the silver tree standing tall and more than a little proud in the distance, giving off an air of annoyed indifference at the world around it.

“When has the magic of Nerissette given any of us what we wanted? Especially when it thinks we need something different?”

“But what could we need that’s here? Winston had the dragons burn the Crystal Palace to the ground to keep your aunt and the Fate Maker from taking control of it and the Fate Maker destroyed everything else that wasn’t in flames. There’s nothing here to find.”

“I don’t know.” I rubbed my right hand over my left arm nervously as I glanced around, searching for someone,
anyone
. If only Winston were here, he’d know what to do. He’d keep his head and he’d be able to think our way out of this. “I don’t know why we’re here.”

“So what should we do?” Mercedes asked.

“We search the castle,” I said as I pushed myself to my feet. “Maybe there are still people here. Timbago or some of the rest of the staff.”

“And what is Timbago going to tell us?”

“I don’t know. But he knows more than almost anyone else, and we have to be here for a reason.”

“What about the tear?” Mercedes asked. “Do you think that maybe we’re here to find that?”

“No, it’s not the tear.” My hand drifted up to the necklace tucked inside my tunic and grasped the crystal, tugging on it for reassurance. Just touching it made me feel safer, calmer. Like I knew that I’d be okay.

“What do you mean? What else could we be here for? It’s got to be the tear we’re here for.”

“No.” I shook my head, not wanting to lie to my best friend unless I absolutely had to, but I knew I couldn’t tell her about the box hidden inside the forests of Dramera. Not until I was sure that I could keep her—and everyone else—safe.

“So why then?”

“I don’t know, but right now we need to find someone, anyone, who can tell us what’s going on.”

“Right,” Mercedes said. “Where do we start?”

I looked at the burning palace and my stomach rolled as I took in the destruction.

“Maybe they’re all hiding in the cellars?” Mercedes suggested. “That was the plan, wasn’t it? Everyone who wasn’t fighting was either going into the woods or hide in the lower levels of the palace. Maybe they’re there.”

“They can’t be inside that.” I swallowed as the flames crackled and smoke poured out of where my dome had been. “Where else could they be?”

“On the road? Or maybe they went into the forest?” Mercedes asked. “If I were the rest of the household staff, when they set the palace on fire I’d have followed the army. It’s the only safe place to go.”

“No.” I clenched my hands in my shirt, trying to keep them from trembling. “Timbago wouldn’t have left the palace.”

The necklace I was wearing started to hum, almost as if it approved of my decision.

“Allie, he wouldn’t stay here—the palace is on fire.
On fire.
A flaming palace is not a place you stick around.”

“He would have stayed,” I said, even though I didn’t know why I was so sure. “He would have wanted to be nearby in case there were people still in Neris who needed him.”

“There were soldiers attacking,” Mercedes said. “He wouldn’t have stayed.”

I turned away from my palace and toward the maze. “He would have hidden and waited for them to leave. He wouldn’t abandon the palace.”

“Where then?” Mercedes asked. “Where would you hide in this nightmare?”

“Inside the labyrinth.” The stone hummed again, and somehow I knew I was right. When the palace caught fire he would’ve herded the rest of the household staff into the maze. If they could’ve gotten to the inside of the labyrinth the magic that surrounded the mermaids’ pool might have been enough to keep them safe.

“Why would they go to the labyrinth?” Mercedes asked. “It’s surrounded by trees. Trees burn, Allie. If the palace was on fire then the labyrinth is the last place they would have gone.”

I started toward the hillside where the labyrinth was anyway, determined to find Timbago. “I don’t know how I know,
but I do.
If Timbago is here then he went to the maze.”

We reached the hill between my palace and the mermaid’s grotto and I saw smoke coming over the other side of it, a giant funnel of horrible-smelling black smoke curling toward the sky.

“Oh, God.” I sprinted up the hill, Mercedes following behind me.

“Wait!” She screamed, and I felt all the air rush out of me as she tackled me from behind, knocking both of us to our knees just as we reached the top.

The tears I’d been holding back slipped down my cheeks. I looked up and found myself staring at lifeless bodies scattered in the valley below where the labyrinth had once been. Brigitte, the housemaid who had woken me on the morning of my Great Hall, was curled up on her side, her eyes closed like she was sleeping.

Timbago was lying on the ground in front of me, his eyes closed and his face turned toward the sky, his arms flung out at his sides as blood soaked through his shirt.

“No!” I lunged toward him, and Mercedes threw her arms around me, holding me as I started to sink to the ground, my knees shaking as I stared at him, wide-eyed and disbelieving. “No. No.”

“Wait, please.” She hugged me closer. “Everything down there is still burning.”

“I have to get to Timbago,” I sobbed, scrambling to get free of her arms as she pinned me against her, cradling me to her chest. “He needs my help.”

“Allie—”

I jerked out of her arms, sobbing, and crawled to him, unconcerned about the embers floating around me. “I can’t leave him here like this.”

“Your Majesty…” Timbago’s voice no more than a faint whisper, and his eyes fluttered open. “Is that you, Queen Alicia? My queen. The Rose in my charge, what are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” I said when I finally reached him. I patted along his chest looking for his wounds, trying to keep from crying. “What happened?”

“We…” He struggled to sit up and winced as I helped him sit upright, leaning against my side. “…were outnumbered.”

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed as he reached up to grab my hand in his clawed one.

“It’s our war, too, those of us who only serve and watch. It’s our home to defend as much as it is yours. All of us. This was our home as much as it is yours. None of us were willing to abandon it. To abandon
you
.”

“I know.” I nodded, and he clutched at my shoulder with his other hand.

“The tear? Have you kept it safe?”

“It’s in my crown case in Dramera. It’s safe.”

“No.” He reached up to cradle my neck, slipping his finger underneath the chain of my necklace and pulled it up so that I could see the crystal shining in the mixture of fire and sunlight. “Keep it safe.”

“But—” I stared down at the necklace and suddenly it all made sense. The tingly feelings that I felt every time I touched the necklace. The burning desire I had to hide the tear from Darinda, to keep her from touching the bracelet. I’d thought it was to keep the bracelet safe, but it hadn’t been. It had been to keep her from touching it, from telling me that the bracelet contained no magic. The tear itself had worked the magic to keep it hidden. To keep it safe. Even from me.

“I had to make sure that it was protected,” Timbago said, wrapping both of our fingers around the stone. “I swore my life to protect the tear until it was needed. Now it is. When the time comes, use it to trap the Fate Maker inside the Bleak, and then destroy it. Break the spell and trap him.”

“How? Everything we can find says that I need a fire a million times hotter than all the dragons of Nerissette combined. I don’t know what burns hotter than dragon flame or where to find it.”

“Break the spell and destroy him. Destroy him, my queen. Only then will you ever have the chance to make Nerissette free. Be a good queen.” Timbago let his eyes close, slumping against my shoulder.

“Timbago?” I shook the goblin but his mouth fell open and nothing else happened. He didn’t breathe or move or anything. “Timbago!”

Mercedes came toward me and stood on the other side of his body, her eyes wide. “Allie?”

“He’s dead. I don’t know what happened. He was alive and now—”

She reached down and touched the side of his neck, her hands trembling. She pulled away from him and came around to grab my shoulders, dragging me away from him as well. “I’m sorry, Allie,” she whispered into my hair.

“But he was just talking to me. You had to have seen him. He was just sitting up, talking to me.”

“Allie.”

My hunting shirt was smeared red with blood and the goblin’s body was drenched in it as well.

Mercedes stood and raised her hands, swaying toward the roasted, dead branches of the shrubs that had made up the maze. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry that I let them do this to you.”

She raised her arms higher, and the trees of the surrounding forest began to sway, a wailing sound coming from the clash of their branches that sounded like they were weeping for the sacrifice of the burned shrubbery. The breeze from the trees lifted the ashes and they began to float away, drifting past me like angry snowflakes.

When the last of the ashes had fallen away I stood and moved closer to Mercedes. I stared at the empty pool, the water in it dried up, the large rock in its center that had once been Queen Talia’s throne just sitting there alone. They were gone. All of them were gone.

“Allie?” Mercedes looked at me.

“What?”

“What do we do now?”