Silver Borne

“Grandma Alicia,” she said.

He looked startled, then he smiled. “Has anyone ever told you that you don’t look like anyone’s grandmother? Is it a rescue, then? Like in the old stories?”

“No,” said Samuel, who had turned to face the doorway. “It’s a trap.”

“Welcome to my home,” said a familiar dark voice. “I’m so happy you came to call.”

The woman who stood in the doorway of the cell was lovely. Her hair was dark smoke, pulled back in a complicated braid composed of many small plaits. It flowed down her back and dragged the ground like an Arabian show horse’s tail and set off the porcelain of her skin and the rose of her lips.

She was looking at me. “I am so glad to have you in my home, Mercedes Thompson. I was just trying to call you on my cell when—imagine my surprise—I discovered that you were here. But you did not bring it.” Having a fairy queen talking about cell phones almost was enough to make me laugh. Almost.

I raised my chin. By stealth, by strength, by bargain. “I am not such a poor bargainer, fairy queen. If I had brought it, we could not play.”

She smiled, and her silver-gray eyes warmed. “By all means,” she said. “Let us play.”

Chapter 14

“BUT THIS IS NOT THE PROPER PLACE FOR BARGAINING,” she said. “Follow me.”

Ariana picked up Phin in her arms. Samuel looked at Gabriel.

“I’m okay, Doc,” he said. He glanced at Ariana, then looked at me. “Werewolf?” he mouthed.

“No,” said Samuel. “That’s me. Ariana is fae.”

Gabriel jerked his head to Samuel. “You’re . . .” And then his face cleared. “That explains a few things . . . Snowball?”

Samuel smiled. “Are you sure you don’t need help?”

“Phin’s the one who was really hurt,” he said. “He’s gotten a lot better over the past week, but he didn’t start off good.”

I gave Gabriel a sharp look, but I supposed it wasn’t really important to tell him that he’d only been gone a day, out in the real world—if we didn’t get out before Zee had to stop holding the door open, then it really wouldn’t matter.

The fairy queen’s voice floated through the doorway. “Are you coming?”

Ariana nodded to Samuel, who took point again out the door, following the fairy queen. Ariana went next, and I waved my hand for Gabriel and Jesse to precede me. I took a deep breath, the kind that cleared your mind and lungs before some extreme endeavor—and smelled earth and growing things in this cold marble room.

Only the fairy queen’s glamour would work in her Elphame, Zee had said. I paid attention to my nose as we walked down the hall in the wake of the fairy queen.

Question, I thought, as I tried to sniff out the scents that were real from the ones produced by the queen’s illusions. If it looks like a hallway, feels like a hallway, and acts like a hallway—is it important to figure out that it isn’t a hallway?

But curiosity is very nearly my besetting sin. Gradually, as we walked, the scent of dirt, of the sap of wounded wood, and of something that might have been sorrow grew. I glanced up at the dangling lights and saw tree roots instead of silver wires, and shining rocks instead of gemstones, rocks much like the one Zee had given Ariana. I blinked, and the gems were back, but I didn’t believe in them anymore, and they wavered.

I stumbled and looked down, momentarily seeing a root sticking up from a soft dirt floor, then my vision changed and the tiny white tiles, laid flat and even with nothing to trip over, were back.

“Mercy?” Jesse asked. “Are you all right?”

The queen looked back at me, and her face—though still beautiful—was different from the woman she’d been just a few minutes ago. It was elongated from chin to forehead, and her eyelashes were longer than humanly possible without glue and fake eyelashes. Narrow, clear wings, like a damselfly’s, poked up from her shoulders. They were too small to lift her body off the ground without magic.

“Fine,” I said.

The long silver gown the queen had been wearing was real enough, but there were dark brown stains that might have been old blood on the hem and near her wrists. The necklace she wore, which had looked like a silver-and-diamond waterfall, was of tarnished black metal, and the set stones were uncut.

My first sight of the great hall she led us to was jaw-dropping, if only for ostentatiousness. The floors were white marble shot with gray and silver, and pillars of green jade rose gracefully to support an arching ceiling that would not have looked out of place at the Notre Dame Cathedral. Silver trees with jade leaves grew out of the marble floor and shivered, disturbed by a wind I could not feel. When the leaves knocked together, they chimed musically. Graceful benches carved out of pale and dark woods, like a wooden chess set, were placed artfully around the room, occupied by lovely women and beautiful men, who all looked at us when we entered the room.

At the far side of the hall there was a raised dais with a silver throne, delicately made and decorated with gems of green and red, each as big as my hand. Curled up next to the chair was a cat that looked like a small cheetah until it lifted its head, displaying huge ears. Serval, I thought, or something that looked a lot like the medium-sized African hunting cat. But I didn’t smell a cat: the whole room smelled of rotting wood and dying things.

And then the room I was walking through wasn’t a room at all.

I didn’t think there were any naturally occurring caves in this area. There are a few man-made caves because some of the wineries have carved their own caverns into the basalt to age their wines. Most of our geology is igneous, which allows for lava tubes, but no limestone caves like the ones in Carlsbad. I suppose magic, if it is strong enough, doesn’t care much about geology—because we were in a huge cave whose walls, ceiling, and floor were not stone but earth and roots.

The Elphame was magic made, but I wondered if it was the fairy queen’s magic that had created it. Ariana had looked at the tree roots in the cave Zee’s entrance had brought us to, and she said that there must be a forest lord about. Looking around, I thought she was right.

The floor was woven from tree roots—I had to look sharp not to trip and draw attention to myself again. The fairy queen’s throne was the only thing in the whole room that had not altered when I saw through the glamour. The pillars were thick roots hanging from the ceiling or bursting from the floor like living stalactites and stalagmites. The benches were formed of living wood, not so pretty as the queen’s illusions, but more beautiful.

Most of the fae in the room were not pretty—though there were a few as long as your tastes weren’t hung up on humanity as a standard for beauty. None of them looked like lords and ladies—Ariana and the fairy queen herself were the most human-appearing among them, and neither would have been able to walk into a store without everyone knowing that she was other.

I didn’t waste much time looking at the court fae, though. It was the creature that lay behind the fairy queen’s throne that caught my attention. It lay huge and still, like a great redwood cut down by the woodsman’s axe. It had bark and evergreen needles—but it also had four eyes as big as di

Next to the throne was a middle-aged woman who had the strong features and coloring of the Mediterranean people—Greek or Italian or possibly even Turkish. She wore the collar I’d begun to associate with the fairy queen’s thralls, but she was also chained to the throne. My nose told me that somewhere among the fae, the humans, and the dying forest lord, there was a witch. I could see a witch being tough enough that the fairy queen would want more than just a silver ring around her throat to ensure she was controlled.