Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

Livvy said something about better weather for following suspicious Centurions, and she was already moving to walk next to Ty, like she always did. Kit followed after them, hands in the pockets of his jeans, though he could feel the Herondale ring, heavy on his finger, as if he had only now remembered the weight.

*   *   *

The Land Under the Hill. The Delightful Plain. The Place Beneath the Wave. The Lands of the Ever-Young.

As the hours wore on, all the names Emma had ever heard for Faerieland ran through her head. Conversation between the four of them had grown quieter and fallen eventually into an exhausted silence; Cristina trudged along beside Emma wordlessly, her pendant glimmering in the moonlight. Mark led the way, checking their path against the stars every short while. In the distance the Thorn Mountains became clearer and closer, rising stark and unforgettable against a sky the color of blackened sapphire.

The mountains weren’t often visible, though. Mostly the path they followed wound through low-hanging trees that grew close together, boughs occasionally intertwining. More than once Emma would catch a glimpse of bright eyes flashing out from between the shadows. When tree branches rustled, she would look up to catch sight of shadows moving quickly above them, laughter trailing behind them like mist.

“These are the places of the wild fey,” said Mark, as the road curved around a hill. “The gentry fey stay within the Courts or sometimes town. They like their creature comforts.”

Here and there were signs of habitation: crumbled mossy bits of old stone walls, wooden fences cleverly fitted together without the use of nails. They passed through several villages in the hour before dawn: Every one of them was shuttered and dark, windows broken and empty. As they went farther into Faerie they began to see something else, too. The first time they saw it, Emma stopped short and exclaimed—the grass they’d been walking on had suddenly dissolved under her feet, puffing up white and gray like ash around her ankles.

She looked around in astonishment and discovered that the others were staring too. They had wandered into the edge of a ragged circle of diseased-looking land. It reminded Emma of photos she’d seen of crop circles. Everything within the perimeter of the circle was a dull, sickly whitish gray: the grass, the trees, the leaves and plants. The bones of small animals were scattered among the gray vegetation.

“What is this?” Emma demanded. “Some kind of dark faerie magic?”

Mark shook his head. “I have never seen any blight such as this before. I do not like it. Let us make haste away.”

No one argued, but as they hurried through the ghost towns and across the hills, they saw several more patches of the ugly blight. At last the sky began to turn light with dawn. All of them were nearly dropping with exhaustion when they left the road behind and found themselves in a place of trees and rolling hills.

“We can rest here,” Mark said. He pointed to a rise of ground opposite, whose top was hidden by a number of stone cairns. “Those will give some shelter, and some cover.”

Emma frowned. “I hear water,” she said. “Is there a stream?”

“You know we can’t drink the water here,” Julian said, as she picked her way downhill, toward the sound of fluid bubbling over rocks and around tree roots.

“I know, but we could at least wash off in it—” Her voice died. There was a stream, of sorts, bisecting the valley between the two low hills, but the water wasn’t water. It was scarlet, and thick. It moved sluggishly, slow and red and dripping, between the black trunks of trees.

“ ‘All the blood that’s shed on earth, runs through the springs of that country,’ ” said Mark, at her elbow. “You quoted that to me.”

Julian moved to the edge of the blood stream and knelt down. With a quick gesture, he dipped his fingers in. They came out scarlet. “It clots,” he said, frowning in mixed fascination and disgust, and wiped his hand off on the grass. “Is it really—human blood?”

“That’s what they say,” said Mark. “Not all the rivers of faerie are like this, but they claim that the blood of the murdered dead of the human world runs through the streams and creeks and springs here in the woods.”

“Who is they?” Julian asked, standing up. “Who says that?”

“Kieran,” said Mark simply.

“I know the story too,” said Cristina. “There are different versions of the legends, but I have heard many and most say that the blood is human, mundane blood.” She backed up, took a running jump, and landed on the other side of the bloody stream with some feet to spare.

The rest of them followed her, and trudged up the hill to the flat, grassy top, which commanded a view of the surrounding countryside. Emma suspected the cairns of crumbled stones had once been a watchtower of some sort.