Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(62)

If I am not leading Wendell to his doom.

I brought my grandfather’s journal with me on our journey—I am not certain why. I feel uneasy whenever I open the thing, and it is not as if I do not already have enough to be uneasy about.

As I have been unable to ignore the parallels between my grandfather and me, so too do I find myself seeing echoes of Wendell in my grandfather’s mysterious “she.” Like Wendell, “she” is golden-haired, her tresses impossibly soft, more like the fur of some delicate animal. She is vengeful in a way that puts me in mind of the Macan story; any and all who offend her are slain. When angered, she becomes a “storm of wrath” and cannot be reasoned with.

My skin prickles when I come to this part.

So many have died by her hand that she is haunted by avenging ghosts wherever she goes, my grandfather writes, quite conversationally. So familiar is she with Death that she has seen its door, felt its wintry chill. She can kill so swiftly that her enemy has no knowledge of what has befallen them, or so slowly they feel as if they have died a dozen times before the end comes.

He carries on in this disturbingly poetical vein for several paragraphs, complimenting his dearest’s murderous temper with the same warmth as his praise for her golden tresses. This “she” is violent; unfathomable; capricious.

No, she is not like Wendell. But are they entirely unalike?



* * *



—

The Gap of Wick is a pass between two mountains, jagged and green with patches of bare sandstone, their peaks shrouded in cloud. The surrounding countryside is open, with only a few groves of yew scattered here and there, and most of these contain several attentive oaks, as if the ghastly things also enjoy the isolation. It is a desolate place that feels less empty than forgotten. A great many standing stones dot the landscape, some singular, others running in parallel lines. It is unusual for a boggart to choose such a place to settle; most of their ilk crave companionship.

The clouds parted ahead, revealing a stone tower atop the nearest foothill. It was tall with a tessellated roof and an odd miscellany of windows, and the lowest floor was an open courtyard with immense arches of no architectural period I could recognize. If I gazed at it long enough, the structure seemed to shift slightly.

“We’ll need to walk from here,” Wendell said, swinging down from his enormous horse. With us we had brought only Lord Taran and two guards, and they followed his lead, leaving their mounts to browse the heather. I reluctantly dismounted Red Wind—while I am still half in terror of the creature, I have grown to appreciate her smooth pace over the course of our journey. I patted her nose and she rewarded me with a tremendous snort; my hand came away wet.

The ground was pockmarked with oddly-shaped holes. They were cut vertically into the lumpy ground, and sloped down into blackness. More worryingly, the turf was scattered with bones—animal, I hoped. I could make out a number of whitish lumps in the distance that I took for sheep, though there were no farmsteads in the vicinity.

“Bogles,” Wendell explained. “They’ve made tunnels beneath the heather. Bloody pests! And look, there is a door to the mortal realm over there.” He pointed to a tall standing stone like a jagged fang, which was bent at a strange angle.

“Their visit to Faerie was of short duration,” Lord Taran said, eyeing the bones.

I was aghast. “These are all human remains?”

“So it appears,” Lord Taran said. To my surprise, he looked irritated by the sight—hardly the appropriate response to murder, but incongruous with my perception of him.

“The bogles will not trouble us,” Wendell said. With that, he unsheathed his sword and stomped up the hill. I half expected him to start slashing at bogles left and right, but instead he simply tapped on the ground with the tip as he went, like someone politely knocking at a door. This had the opposite effect of knocking, however; not one bogle emerged. Indeed, as I followed him up the hill, I heard several soft clicks and creaks, as of small doors closing, and caught the occasional glimpse of a little hunching figure with long, grabby arms disappearing into the landscape like some form of scuttling insect. There was something uncanny about the creatures that put me in mind of the tree fauns, or the sheerie Wendell and I fought last year, and I was happy not to get a good look at them, though less than pleased to be tramping about inches from those grasping limbs.

“Bloody mountains!” Wendell exclaimed after we had been hiking uphill for perhaps forty-five seconds. “I had my fill of them in the Alps. Well, we are in my realm, so I may do as I like with the tedious things.”

Before I could ask what this meant, Wendell made a gesture that was like patting an invisible dog. I felt absolutely nothing, but the wind lessened. I thought this was all he had done, until I looked up and found the tower immediately before us. The foothill we had been ascending now barely deserved the name, and was little more than a rise in the landscape.

“The boggart may not thank you for that,” I said, in my usual attempt at nonchalance in the face of his impossible power.

Wendell made a face. “I would not thank him for my sore ankles. If he likes mountains so much, he can relocate to some godforsaken, glacier-infested height. Wait out here,” he added to the guards, then he wandered through one of the arches, gazing about himself like a tourist. Even after what I had just seen, I had to tamp down an urge to caution him, for this was a boggart we were about to confront, not some household brownie.[*] Lord Taran grimaced and followed more slowly, his sword drawn at his side, so at least one of them had some sense.