EIGHT

THE SILVER KINGDOM

The web shook more violently. In the dim light, Aster could make out few details of what was coming, but it was big, bigger than a school bus, and many-legged.

But she didn’t think it was a spider.

That would have been bad enough, a black widow the size of a semi, but something about its shape, the deranged kinetics of its stride—this was the nightmare some shadowy fragment had been spalled from to create spiders.

She struggled against the web’s threads, but they held her fast. Panic tried to take her senses, but she fought it down. Even if she could move, she would never escape the thing, she knew that. There had to be another way out.

How had she gotten here?

She didn’t know. She’d felt the sting in her neck—then she was here.

It was almost on her now. In the shadows, she saw faint clusters of gleaming spheres, hundreds of them, like the black caviar her father liked . . .

Several Utterances came to mind, but all seemed like bad jokes in the face of this thing.

What was it the Day Queen had said? About surviving the cost of coming here?

She understood then, or at least she thought she did. She couldn’t fight it, any more than you could fight a dream. Instead, you would wake. This place wasn’t merely her dream, it was a nightmare the universe itself was having. It took more than pinch on the arm to wake from.

She pronounced a Recondite Utterance, and vomited light. Beams shown from her eyes as the world unfolded, tearing her as it did so, shredding her bone and sinew and then pulling it all back together again.

The web disappeared. She was lying on a stone floor, the echo of a noise like thunder repeating itself in the depths of the cave. Gradually the sound faded, replaced by the burbling of the underground river

Eve sprawled on the floor nearby, struggling feebly; she looked as if she had been thrown there. Her lips were red, and a spray of red droplets covered her face like freckles.

Instinctively, Aster slapped her hand to her neck, which still stung. It felt wet, and when she looked, she saw her hand was covered in blood. She felt very weak.

“What did you do to me?” she said.

“It’s hard,” Eve said. “It took all of my strength to send you there. It was only fair to take some back.” As she said this, Eve climbed slowly to her feet.

What was she, some sort of vampire? But Aster kept remembering the thing in the web. Not a vampire, something weirder, and worse. The Day Queen had been warning her, she saw that now.

“It’s okay,” Eve said.

But Aster saw the hunger in her eyes, in the way her hands yearned toward her.

“It really isn’t,” Aster said. She fought to her feet, tried to sprint to the river, but she was so weak she stumbled and fell after a few steps. The water was only about twenty feet away, but even that seemed too far. She struggled back to her feet.

“No,” Eve shouted. “Don’t. You won’t survive.”

Maybe not, but Aster knew she wouldn’t survive if she stayed. Whatever Eve’s original intentions, she now had a hunger that would not be satisfied with a few drops of blood. At least in the river, Aster had a chance. She took a breath and ran. She heard Eve coming close behind.

Aster knew what she had to do, and she did it. She was much deeper in the Kingdoms now and needed no fetish to accomplish it.

Eza azmi lassas.

She jumped, and the cold, black water took her in. She exploded; then came back together, but not the same.

She had transformed once before, with the aid of a feather from her father’s things. She had become a raven, and she had very nearly remained one; if it hadn’t been for Billy, she probably would have.

Now she was one with the swift water; she heard sound in her bones and smelled with her skin and saw nothing at all. The river fell, and fell further, and even her skill at swimming was no match for it. All she could do was thrash her fins, and hope she wasn’t smashed to death on the way down.

There came a moment of terrific speed and pressure and absolute confusion, then, at last a blush of light filtering down through the grey-silver surface above her. She flicked her tail, trying to find a quieter place where the water wasn’t moving so quickly, where she could take time to feed.

No, a stubborn thing persisted in her. Not to feed.

She imagined leaping from the water but knew deep down only death lay in that. As much as she knew she should, it seemed strange, impossible, suicidal to leave the life-giving stream. How much easier it would be to stay in the river, or to have remained in oubliette?

No. She recalled herself.

Then she was struggling toward the surface, her lungs aching, the water already numbing her fingers and toes.

Her strength was nearly spent when she pulled up onto the mossy bank. In the distance, her father’s fortress was shadow against a coral sky. She had assumed the underground river was a branch of the one that cascaded in a waterfall down the front of the castle, and that it would eventually rejoin the river she had seen flowing seaward. If she had been wrong—if it had emptied into some deep, sterile aquifer—she would probably have remained a fish long enough to die of starvation.

But she hadn’t been wrong.

She sat on the bank, shivering.

Find the orbs? She needed at least one to find the others. And vague visions aside, there was only one she knew the location of—the one her father had.

Which meant going back into the castle. This time she couldn’t simply walk in—that hadn’t worked out so well. No, this was going to require a little thought.

Veronica had been right. It had been a mistake coming here before going after Errol. Whatever Errol was up to, he would almost certainly have helped her. And she would still have Veronica, too. Now she was alone.

And cold. And naked. Probably, she thought, the first order of business ought to be to find some clothes.

Quick’s eyes widened when he answered the door, but he almost instantly averted them.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You were kind to me before. I didn’t—”

“Come in, fast,” he said. “Oak, bring a blanket. And keep your eyes shut.”

“You’re being peculiar,” she heard Oak say.

But a moment later, she was safely wrapped in a rough woolen blanket.

Sharp came through the entry door behind her to join them.

“Where’s Copper?” she asked.

“Scratch got her,” Sharp said.

“Her?”

“Yeah. We cut her hair and dressed her like a boy. Worked for a while, didn’ it?” He sounded like he was working at being cheerful, but he looked miserable.

“Wait,” Quick said. “You got away, didn’ you? Or were you never caught?”

“I got away,” she said.

“Can you tell us where the girls are?” Quick asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was never with the other girls.”

She heard an odd snuffling sound and saw Oak had turned away to hide the fact that he was crying.

Aster’s jaw tightened.

Nothing had ever been simple. Once she had been focused on a single goal—curing her father. Every complication had been either an aid or an impediment to that objective.

She had failed, and now things were completely muddled. The curse might have been bad, but it wasn’t her fault. Her father being here was. If she hadn’t entered the Kingdoms, she wouldn’t have met Dusk, and if she hadn’t allowed Dusk to tag along on her little quest, the warrior-woman would never have learned the information she needed to bring all of this to pass.

It now went way beyond trying to cure her father, if there even was a cure for what he was now. Now she had wrongs of her own making to consider.

“I promise you,” she said. “All of you. I will find Copper and the others. Somehow I will set them free. Do you understand?”

“Who are you?” Sharp asked. “Who are you to make such promises to us?”

“I am Aster,” she said. “Aster Kostyena. I will do what I say.”

The name didn’t appear to mean anything to them, but her tone did.

“Oak, go get her another of Copper’s dresses,” Quick said.

The three boys stepped outside to give her some privacy.

This dress was much plainer than the last, just a grey wool shift. She realized that on her last visit, Copper had probably given her her very best clothes.

She wasn’t quite finished adjusting the dress when the door burst open.

“Apologies,” Quick said. “But a whole bunch of Scratch’s divlings are coming up the road. You’d best go out the back and be quick.”

“Oh.” But she hesitated.

“They won’t hurt us unless they find you here,” he said.

“Right,” she said.

She dodged out the back door, which, it turned out, led into a pen containing a chicken coop. Several offended hens squawked and flapped as she passed through. Then she was in the yard proper and running.

For a few minutes, she thought she’d been lucky. Then she heard hounds start to bay, and voices shouting behind her. They didn’t sound . . . normal.

Call the Silver Kingdom.

She wasn’t sure if it was her own thought; if it felt like that of an intruder. Nevertheless she did it, feeling the magic roil around her. She thought hard about the orb and her first memory of it: the feel as it touched her skin and its weight pressed in her hand, a soft, lilting voice . . .

She’d been fishing a few times, so she knew what it felt when something took the hook. This felt a little like that. She yanked.

A sudden concussion of air—whump!—flung her to the ground. Something more solid crashed into her. She scrambled up, as the other fellow did, too, shaking his red tresses as if stunned.

“Haydevil!” she shouted.

“Eh, that’s—what?” he said.

“Never mind,” she said. “Get me out of here. Get me out of here now!”

She glanced behind her, and saw the dogs through the trees, rust-red mastiffs with gigantic eyes. Behind them he saw vague forms that didn’t look exactly like people. She remembered the boys who had served the Sheriff before, how they had devolved into creatures both less and more than human.

“No need to yell,” Haydevil, taking her arm and whirling into the air.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“You have something with you? A little sphere?”

“The Silver Kingdom?” he said. “I have it.”

Her father’s castle was a distant monster, crouching by the sea.

“Let me see it,” she said. “Then I’ll tell you.”