Girl Who Read the Stars Page 15

  The Erlking arches an eyebrow at him. “You ask for my army and my protection, and you still seek more?”

  “Benedict’s been tricked. Trapped.”

  “Benedict Le Fay has been tricked?” repeats the Erlking. “Pray tell, how does one trick a Le Fay?”

  “Very cunningly,” Will responds. “We need him for the prophecy, if we have any chance of winning this war, so we need to find him.”

  “You need a traveler? Really? That’s what you need to win? In that case, I shall withdraw all of my armies as soon as you retrieve him.”

  “You know that’s not how prophecies work, Kainen—”

  “Why are you here?” The Erlking’s voice is cold, and I shiver with it. “I have no interest in helping you find a traveler. I say good riddance to him.”

  “You want the prophecy to be fulfilled as much as the rest of us do. And we need Benedict to do it. And you can find him, can’t you? The goblins have always been able to hunt travelers.”

  “Goblins hunt many things,” the Erlking replies. “That doesn’t mean we can find things that don’t wish to be found. If your traveler is any good, he will never be found. And if he isn’t any good, then the Seelies will have already gotten him, no?” The Erlking says this very casually.

  I frown at him, because I am furious at Ben but I still don’t like to hear people casually discussing his death.

  The Erlking notices, turning his gaze onto me. “You disagree?”

  “He’s looking for his mother,” I say as if in his defense.

  “His mother?” the Erlking echoes. “His mother was named centuries ago. Or yesterday, depending on the time.” The Erlking pats at his chest, where he replaced the pocket watch.

  “Not according to the book. The book says she’s the only one who knows where the other fays are, and we need to find her to get to them. This doesn’t have to do with Ben; this has to do with everything else. I don’t care if we ever find Ben.”

  The Erlking looks at me for a moment before arching one of his dark brows wryly up. He looks as if he doesn’t believe me for a second, which is really irritating. Then he says, “Well, if the book told Benedict that his mother is still alive, it must be a trap. It’s a book of power; the words in it could be traps just as much as they could be truths. Lord Dexter was on our side unless he wasn’t. You know how the saying goes: never trust a faerie or a wizard or an ogre or a gnome. Never trust anything except a goblin.”

  “That’s not how the saying goes,” sighs Will.

  “If Benedict’s mother were still alive, where is she? Why would she have kept herself hidden for so long?”

  “Because she had a price on her head,” Will says. “Because she had to hide to survive.”

  I look at him. “Hang on, I thought you thought this was a trap too.”

  “It can be true and still be a trap,” Will replies. “But you’re right—we don’t have any other option. If she’s the one who hid the other fays, we need her. And if anyone could have stayed hidden all this time, it would have been her. She was the best enchantress in the Otherworld.”

  “Her son isn’t so bad at it, from what I hear, and he couldn’t get his hiding enchantment to hold up,” the Erlking points out, tipping his head my way.

  “Selkie’s enchantment was supposed to break,” Will says. “Otherwise the prophecy would never have been fulfilled.”

  “Then why not just wait until the rest of the enchantments break?”

  “Because we don’t have time, as you just pointed out. Because the clock is ticking, and we didn’t coordinate our battle strategy with Benedict Le Fay’s hidden, named-or-maybe-not-named mother, and because you know there are other prophecies in motion that you do not want to be fulfilled.”

  There is a long, tense moment. I feel like I can hear the Erlking’s pocket watch tick forward another minute, but that might just be my nervous imagination.

  The Erlking finally says, “Where would she have been all this time?”

  It’s such an impossible question for me to contemplate. I know almost nothing about the Otherworld, so I don’t even know where to look. At least if you lose someone on planet Earth, you have a general idea of where the continents are, of where that person might be. Yeah, he might be on the other side of the planet, but you could get in a plane and you could start searching systematically, street by street, if you really had to. I have to find a faerie who may or may not exist and I don’t even know the geography. I might as well roam the Earth, asking every random person I encounter, “Do you think you might be a faerie?” in order to find the other three fays.

  The Erlking goes on, “Who would ever want to have been caught harboring such a fugitive from the Seelies? The Seelies will destroy you for no reason, never mind this. She would never have been able to shelter herself for so very long—”

  He cuts himself off, and I realize in that moment that he’s had an idea, an idea he doesn’t want to share with us.

  “What?” I demand.

  He swallows and looks at Will and then back to me and admits reluctantly, “Unless she went to the Unseelie Court.”

  “And who’s that?” Kelsey asks.

  “The Seelie Court’s worse half,” Will explains, and I remember Ben mentioning them before. “The only small pocket of the Otherworld that’s not under Seelie control is under Unseelie control, and they are even worse than the Seelies, which is why the Seelies never conquered them. They let them be because they couldn’t be bothered. If you were hiding from Seelies, you’d hide there. But only if it was your last resort. Because the Unseelies would betray you back to the Seelies in a heartbeat. You can’t trust faeries as a general rule, but the Unseelies have never even heard the word ‘trust.’”

  “That’s where Ben thought she was,” I note.

  “If she’s anywhere,” agrees the Erlking.

  “Well, whether or not she’s there, that’s undoubtedly where Ben went to find her. We have to go to the Unseelie Court.”

  The Erlking starts to laugh. He flings back his head in hilarity, his laughter booming about us, echoing off the marble walls of the dining room.

  “Why is that funny?” I demand.

  “The Unseelie Court is closed to visitors,” he says with a smile. “How do you propose to get in?”

  “How did Ben get in?” I counter. “How did his mother get in?”

  “They’re travelers. They can get in anywhere. Like locked rooms with books of power that no one is supposed to have access to.” The Erlking gives Will a dark look, as if to remind him that that is not forgiven; then he looks back at me. “You cannot just walk into the Unseelie Court.”

  “That’s where I was hoping you might come in,” Will inserts.

  The Erlking’s amusement fades. “Will,” he says and sighs.

  “You’re the only one who can get us in,” Will tells him.

  “I don’t disagree with that.” He sighs again and looks briefly to the ceiling. “All these years…True, there are constant battles with the encroaching humans, but mostly they have been ages of peace and prosperity.”

  “I can see that,” Will says. “I think of how you were when you came to me, this ragtag little band of miners, and I see what you’ve done with the place, and the truth is you’ve done marvelously, Kainen, no one can deny that. But it won’t work. You can’t keep them out of this one. The Seelies will destroy everything this time if we don’t stop them. And your armies won’t be enough. We need the other fays. And we need a Le Fay.”

  The Erlking regards him heavily for a moment and then looks back to me. “I have heard rumors,” he begins, searching my face. “The most fantastical rumors. Church bells in Tir na nOg, I have been told. A silver bough, for the first time in memory. Is it true? Did you escape from Tir na nOg?”

  “Yes,” I answer firmly.

  “And now you prop
ose to march into the Unseelie Court?”

  “If that’s what we have to do to find the other fays,” I answer again, stubbornly this time.

  The Erlking’s eyes narrow slightly, studying my features closely. “Aren’t you just extraordinary,” he murmurs.

  “I’m just trying to fulfill my prophecy and save the world,” I say. “All in a day’s work.”

  The Erlking looks back to Will. “I thought there would be so much more time before this moment,” he says sadly.

  “We all did,” responds Will.

  “Well.” The Erlking sighs and says solemnly, “You and I rose together. If we are to fall, may we fall together too.” He lifts his wine goblet toward Will.

  Will leans over me and clinks his goblet against it firmly. The sound is sharp and crystalline and chilling.

  “What time is it?” I hear myself ask.

  And the Erlking looks at his pocket watch and says, “11:11.”

  “Make a wish,” says Kelsey softly.

  I don’t. Instead I slip a butter knife off the table and into my pocket. Seems more useful than most of the other things I take.

  • • •

  The Erlking has horses, and they look almost exactly like normal horses, except for the very important fact that they don’t have any eyes. Where their eyes should be is just…smooth skin.

  Kelsey and I stand there looking at them.

  “Don’t say anything about how they don’t have eyes,” Will warns us. “You’ll offend the Erlking.”

  Kelsey and I look at him and then back to the horses. They paw blindly at the ground with their hooves.

  “They’re cave horses,” Safford explains helpfully. “I’ve heard about these.”

  “Why don’t they have eyes?” asks Kelsey.

  “Because they don’t,” Safford answers.

  “Ah, here he comes,” remarks Will, and I turn to look over my shoulder.

  We are standing outside the Erlking’s stables, and the Erlking himself is walking toward us over the expanse of enchanted grass that separates the stables from the palace. His cape is billowing out behind him, and he is walking swiftly, pulling on a pair of black leather gloves, his sword swinging by his side. The little boy servant is skipping beside him to keep up with his pace, holding a small bundle.

  The Erlking does not look happy. He had sent us out to the stables while he called his advisers together—He’s a king, Will told us, he can’t just up and leave—and I discern the chat with his advisers might not have gone as well as hoped.

  “All set?” he asks, taking the reins of the horse that the nearest servant leads to him. He speaks in clipped, brusque tones, very different from the smooth, urbane charm he used before. He looks at us briefly before taking the bundle out of the little boy’s hands. It is some sort of rucksack that he is fastening onto his saddle.

  “Ready,” Will confirms and swings onto his cave horse.

  Kelsey and I exchange a glance.

  “We don’t ride horses,” I state.

  The Erlking, settling atop his own horse, stares at me. “You don’t ride horses?”

  “They don’t ride horses much aboveground anymore,” Will tells him apologetically.

  “It is so uncivilized,” the Erlking complains. “Nobody has any sense of propriety anymore.”

  “Kelsey can ride with me,” Safford offers, his voice bright with hope.

  “Fine.” The Erlking waves one gloved hand dismissively. “The fay can ride with me.” He turns to the servant next to his horse. “Help her up.”

  The servant, without warning, fastens his hands around my waist and lifts me as if I weigh nothing. I make a noise of surprise and, after a bit of inelegant scrambling, manage to get myself onto the horse behind the Erlking, which requires me basically to sit on his cape. I wonder if he’s going to be upset about that and decide not to mention it.

  “Let’s go,” he says. “The sooner we get going, the sooner we get this over with. The clock is ticking.”

  “What time is it now?” I ask.

  “11:12.”

  “We’ve only lost another minute?” I say, surprised.

  “The Seelies must be having trouble with the Boston enchantments. We did do a few things right all those years ago, eh, Will?”

  “It was only a few minutes ago, Kainen, wasn’t it?” replies Will.

  The Erlking urges the horse forward, and I immediately wrap my arms around his waist to keep from falling backward. We move forward at a slow, ambling walk. I’m torn between wishing we were moving a little faster and being terrified of falling off.

  Everyone is silent. The Erlking’s mood doesn’t seem to welcome small talk. For a little while, we wend through the streets of Goblinopolis, keeping next to the river, and the people all seem to recognize their king and gape at us as we pass before them, remembering to bow low and deep. The Erlking doesn’t acknowledge any of this, and we just keep plodding forward.

  The outer limit of the city is marked by a flat wooden bridge over a bend in the river, very unlike the light and elaborate bridge leading to the palace, and there is a gatehouse at the end of it. A goblin dressed a little like one of the Three Musketeers sweeps his hat off his head and bows graciously to us as we pass, and then, almost immediately, the world becomes dimmer and dimmer and dimmer, until we are moving through a darkness so black that it matches the Erlking’s cloak, the lights of Goblinopolis well behind us. In fact, the only way I know the Erlking is there is because I have my arms around him. I cannot see him at all. Nor can I see anyone else in our party, although I can hear the hooves of their horses and the rhythm of their breaths. The darkness closes in all around, making me feel claustrophobic, and I realize now why cave horses don’t have eyes: what would they look at?

  “Can’t we create some sort of light or something?” I ask finally, when I can bear it no longer. It seems to me that we have been walking through pitch blackness for hours, and I am beginning to hear sounds at the edge of my consciousness. The dark keeps pressing in on us from all sides.

  “You’re better off not seeing,” the Erlking replies, which is not very comforting.

  It is comforting to hear someone else’s voice in this intense world of night, and to keep him talking and because I genuinely mean it, I say, “Thank you for this. For helping.”

  “I haven’t much of a choice,” he responds, sounding grim.

  Maybe it’s not the best time to try to talk to the Erlking, I decide.

  “Close your eyes,” he says to me after a long moment of silence, and he sounds a bit softer. “It won’t bother you as much if you close your eyes.”

  I do as he suggests, and he’s right—the darkness is much more bearable when I’m not trying to see through it.

  • • •

  I fall asleep. Probably not surprising, since it’s been a while since I’ve slept and the world around me is so dark and the rocking of the horse and the warm velvet of the Erlking’s cloak are comforting. I wake up when the rocking stops. The Erlking has drawn our horse to a halt, and he is sitting up straighter in the saddle. There is an alertness to him, almost a quivering, and I get the sense that he is listening to something I can’t hear.

  “We stop here,” he decides at last.

  “Stop?” I echo, alarmed. “We don’t have time to stop.”

  “We have plenty of time,” the Erlking replies. “It is barely a quarter after the hour.”

  “But…stop here?” I can’t help but say. I don’t want to stop here. I want to get out of this eternal darkness.

  “It’s nighttime,” he tells me.

  “It’s been nighttime for hours.”

  “No, it hasn’t. You overworld creatures are really appalling at telling time underground. Go on, hop off the horse.”

  “I can’t see the ground,” I tell him. “I’m n
ot hopping off this horse until I can see the ground and I can verify that there are no rats on it.”

  “You’re quite troublesome,” the Erlking sighs.

  “She’s half ogre,” Will explains, and then there is light. It’s probably not very bright, but it’s so dazzling after the darkness that I squint and the Erlking throws up one hand to shield his eyes from it. It is an orb of light, hovering over our heads.

  “Some warning would have been nice, Will,” the Erlking grumbles.

  “Sorry,” Will says, not sounding it.

  “Did you do that?” I ask.

  Will nods, looking almost offended at the question. “I am a wizard, you know.”

  “Yes, and you even know some useful spells,” I agree and then survey our surroundings. It’s a small, round dirt room, I supposed you could call it, almost like a clearing in the middle of tunnels. The ceiling is close over our heads, and the “room” has a number of narrow, dark openings.

  “Did we come through one of those tunnels?” Kelsey asks, looking at the openings as Safford helps her off their horse.

  I follow her gaze, noticing how tiny the tunnels are. The walls and ceiling must have been right on top of us as we’d traveled. Just thinking of it makes me claustrophobic.

  The Erlking looks unconcerned. “That’s why I said it was better that you not be able to see. Are you going to hop off the horse anytime soon?”

  “Oh,” I remember. “Yes.” I slide gracelessly off the horse, feeling stiff and sore.

  The Erlking dismounts gracefully, of course. “If Will starts us a fire,” he remarks, fiddling with his saddle bag, “we can eat.”

  Will, scratching his head with one hand, waves at the ground with the other, and there is a fire, dancing merrily. Another good spell. Will’s wizardry is coming in useful. Why don’t I have any magic?

  “Excellent,” says the Erlking and pulls something out of his saddle bag. He thrusts it into my hands without a word and then leads the horse a short distance away. Safford’s and Will’s horses seem to sense where he is and follow.

  I look down at the bundle in my hands and realize it’s food. Bread and cheese and what looks like dried meat. And some oranges. The Erlking has thought to feed all of us. I am relieved.