Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(39)
Lord Wherry remained sat on his drayfox, looking anxious. He seemed to be in his fifties; the Folk can appear any age they choose, and some prefer to look wise. Naturally, his lined face was still beautiful, his greying brown hair thick and long enough to wear in a plait. It was difficult to imagine him killing anyone, for there was a boyishness about his large eyes and round face that belied his apparent age, but in the opposite direction than was usual for most Folk.
I dismounted to a chorus of disgusting snorts from Red Wind. I paused beside Deilah, who had been surrounded by the remaining guards. “Would you like to come with me?”
“What does it matter what I want?” she said, turning her chin aside. Her eyes were red and swollen, as if she had been crying the entire journey. “Imprisoned princesses have as much say in their destinies as leaves in the wind.”
Good grief. This girl had Wendell’s talent for melodrama, that was clear. “Very well. Then I will choose for you: help her down.”
The guards obliged me, and together we followed Wendell and Taran up the little rise to a grove of yew trees. At first, I thought it was mist before me. It hovered over the forest floor, and wisps of it climbed the trees like ghostly ivy. It seemed thicker than mist, however, unpleasantly so; I felt certain I would become stuck wading through that, like an insect in syrup.
The trees, meanwhile, looked ghastly. Their trunks were covered in scabs and strange protrusions, like infected sores. Wendell was frowning at them, absently twirling a lily he had plucked from the forest path.
“Lilies make charming wedding bouquets, Your Highness,” Lord Taran said in an innocent voice, while smiling snidely at me behind Wendell’s back.
I treated him to my most heartfelt of glares. Wendell blinked at his uncle, then examined the flower. “They do, don’t they?”
“What has happened here?” I said pointedly.
“My stepmother, it seems,” Wendell said. “She has come here, to the dooryard of my court, and placed a curse upon this grove. More specifically than that, I cannot say.”
“It is like the others,” the scout said, looking disgusted.
“We burned the others,” one of the guards said. “This—whatever this place has become—will not ignite on its own, but if we set the neighbouring trees ablaze, and drive the flames towards this grove, it will eventually catch.”
He raised his sword and hacked at the sticky mist. His sword sank deep and then stuck there; he had to wrench it free with a wet smacking sound.
“Don’t,” Wendell said, putting his hand out. Stabbing at the substance had produced a strange reaction; it shuddered and twitched like a wounded beast. It was then that I realized what was niggling at my senses. It was not anything in particular, but rather an absence. I should have been able to hear the minute rustlings and footfalls of brownies and other common fae, watching us from the green forest shadow, indistinguishable from nature’s ordinary soundscape to most mortals, but not to me.
Panic rose within me, as well as horror, but it would be a lie to say these were not alloyed with excitement. I pulled out my notebook and began a quick sketch.
Lord Taran gave a huff of laughter. “What a peculiar little thing you are.”
Wendell, meanwhile, was pacing back and forth, examining the grove with increasing distress. “It is a ruin,” he said. “The trees—the flowers. Every burrow and den. I can’t—”
He lifted his hand and made a sweeping gesture. Something passed over the grove—a ripple of light, smelling of summer and tasting of rain, impossible and wondrous, a cleansing sensation. And then it was gone, and the grove was unchanged.
I rocked back slightly. A part of me wanted to ask him to do that—whatever he had done—again. It was the childish part that was half afraid and half delighted whenever he performed some feat of magic I hadn’t known he was capable of.
He did not repeat the enchantment, though, merely gave a curse and ran a hand through his hair. “Wendell,” I said suddenly, gripping his arm.
Two brownies sat in one of the cursed trees, watching us. At least, I think they were watching us. They too were wrapped in tendrils of the uncanny mist, which seemed to be animating them somehow, like puppets, for it was evident that they were dead; their eyes stared but did not see, and their bodies had a slight translucence. Together, they turned and faded back into the corrupted forest.
“Gather up the deadfall and start the fire,” Lord Taran ordered the guards. “Actually—”
He flicked his hand at a cluster of ferns, and they burst into flame—it was smoky and malcontent, because of the damp, but it burnt brightly. The mist stirred, and then it detached a thick tendril and smothered the fire with a gentle burbling sound.
We all fell back a step.
“It did that before,” the scout said. His face was so pale the scar looked livid, almost fresh. “We must light it away from the margin—once the flames pass a certain size, the corruption cannot defeat them. Come.”
He and two of our guards disappeared into the trees. I turned to where Deilah stood with a guard on either side of her, thinking that I would order them to take her back to our mounts. But Deilah was no longer there. Instead, I found one guard blinking at the space where she had been and the second pinned to the ground beneath a deara, which was both like and unlike the creature Ariadne and I had met: the faerie had roughly the same shape, something halfway between a man and a toad, but it too was dreadfully scabbed, and its body seemed more mist than substance. Yet this had no effect on its ability to do violence. Indeed, the guard was no longer moving—the creature had opened her throat with its teeth.