Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

They were not the Wild Hunt. Emma knew that immediately, without knowing how she knew it. There were too few of them, and they were too silent. The Wild Hunt rode with a fierce clamor. The bronze riders glided silently toward Emma, as if they had been formed out of the clouds.

She could run back toward the cottage, she thought. But that would draw them toward Julian, and besides, they had angled themselves to cut her off from the path back toward Malcolm’s house. They were moving with incredible speed. In seconds, they would be on the cliff.

Her right hand closed on the hilt of Cortana. She drew it almost without conscious thought. The feel of it in her hand grounded her, slowed her heartbeat.

They soared overhead, circling. For a moment Emma was struck by their odd beauty—up close, the horses seemed barely real, as transparent as glass, formed out of wisps of cloud and moisture. They spun in the air and dove like gulls after their prey. As their hooves struck the solid earth of the cliff, they exploded into ocean whitecaps, each horse a spray of vanishing water, leaving the four riders behind.

And between Emma and the path. She was cut off, from everything but the sea and the small piece of cliff behind her.

The four Riders faced her. She braced her feet. The very top of the ridge was so narrow that her boots sank in on either side of the cliff’s spine. She raised Cortana. It flashed in the storm light, rain sliding off its blade. “Who’s there?” she called.

The four figures moved as one, reaching to push back the hoods of their bronze cloaks. Beneath was more shining stuff—they were three tall men and a woman, each of them wearing bronze half masks, with hair that looked like metallic thread wound into thick braids that hung halfway down their backs.

Their armor was metal: breastplates and gauntlets etched all over with the designs of waves and the sea. The eyes they fixed on her were gray and piercing.

“Emma Cordelia Carstairs,” said one of them. He spoke as if Emma’s name were in a foreign language, one his tongue had a hard time wrapping itself around. “Well met.”

“In your opinion,” Emma muttered. She kept a tight grip on Cortana—each of the faeries (for she knew they were faeries) that she was facing was armed with a longsword, hilts visible over their shoulders. She raised her voice. “What does a convoy from the Faerie Courts want from me?”

The faerie raised an eyebrow. “Tell her, Fal,” said one of the others, in the same accented voice. Something about the accent raised the hairs on Emma’s arms, though she couldn’t have said what it was.

“We are the Riders of Mannan,” said Fal. “You will have heard of us.”

It wasn’t a question. Emma desperately wished Cristina were with her. Cristina was the one with vast knowledge of faerie culture. If the words “Riders of Mannan” were supposed to mean something to Shadowhunters, Cristina would know it.

“Are you part of the Wild Hunt?” she asked.

Consternation. A low mutter vibrated among the four of them, and Fal leaned to the side and spat. A faerie with a sharply chiseled jaw and an expression of disdain replied for him.

“I am Airmed, son of Mannan,” he said. “We are the children of a god, you see. We are much older than the Wild Hunt, and much more powerful.”

Emma realized then what it was that she’d heard in their accents. It wasn’t distance or foreignness; it was age, a terrifying age that stretched back to the beginning of the world.

“We seek,” said Fal. “And we find. We are the searchers. We have been under the waves to search and above them. We have been in Faerie, and in the realms of the damned, and on battlefields and in the dark of night and the bright of day. In all our lives there has only been one thing we have sought and not found.”

“A sense of humor?” Emma suggested.

“She should shut her mouth,” said the female Rider. “You should shut it for her, Fal.”

“Not yet, Ethna,” said Fal. “We need her words. We need to know the location of what we seek.”

Emma’s hand felt hot and slippery on the hilt of Cortana. “What do you seek?”

“The Black Volume,” said Airmed. “We seek the same object you and your parabatai seek. The one taken by Annabel Blackthorn.”

Emma took an involuntary step back. “You’re looking for Annabel?”

“For the book,” said the fourth Rider, his voice harsh and deep. “Tell us where it is and we will leave you be.”

“I don’t have it,” Emma said. “Neither does Julian.”

“She is a liar, Delan,” said the woman, Ethna.

His lip curled. “They are all liars, Nephilim. Do not treat us as fools, Shadowhunter, or we will string your innards from the nearest tree.”

“Try it,” said Emma. “I’ll ram the tree down your throat until branches start poking out of your—”