Page 96 of The Kingdom Cursed By Iron

“Distance, Eleanor!” he calls back. “We will overcome it.”

I throw a look at Ruskin, but he seems unfazed by the fact that we’re standing on top of one of Unseelie’s tallest mountains. We left early this morning to trek up here on foot, with Maidar explaining the point of the exercise on the way.

“You did well with the cup reading the other day. That’s the area we should focus on.”

Now I wonder what object he’s going to use and exactly how far away it will be. I scan the other peaks around us, worried he might have already planted something on them.

“So, what am I reading?” I ask.

Maidar stamps his foot down onto the rock.

“This.”

I stare at him and at Ruskin again, to check I’m not losing my mind. A smile plays on Ruskin’s lips, and I guess he’s used to this kind of thing from his old tutor.

“The mountain? But that’s not metal.”

“Augium ore. These mountains are full of big seams of the stuff. It’s where the augium I sold you was mined from. That’s what you’ll be reading.”

“But that has to be miles underground,” I protest again. “I can’t get more than a hundred feet down when I’m trying to read the iron in the Seelie Court.”

“Aye, but there’s probably dark magics holding you back there—keeping you from interfering with the iron. But these mountains have been here since the beginning of Faerie—since before the courts. The founding stone of the Seelie Court was hewn from these very peaks. They emanate power; they don’t stifle it.”

“Besides,” says Ruskin, perching himself elegantly on the edge of an outcrop, “if you can manage this, then the iron will be a piece of cake.”

I try to take encouragement from their words, but it feels like they’re asking too much of me. Still, what do I have to lose by trying?

“All right, I’ll give it a go.”

“Remember the layers, Eleanor, that’s what will take you deeper. Search out the cells.”

“And when you feel like you can’t possibly go any further, keep going,” says Ruskin.

That sounds like utterly useless advice to me, but arguing would only hurt my focus right now. I crouch down onto my haunches, laying a hand against the cold rock.

“Okay,” I say, shaking back my hair and closing my eyes.

It’s odd at first, because the top of the mountains is all stone. There’s nothing for my magic to grab onto in the vast stretch of metal-less space.

Then I hit the first seam. It’s like a lifeline that my power latches onto, wrapping itself around the rich well of augium. We’re close enough to the surface that the memories are easily reached. I sense being opened up to the light, tunnels slowly constructed, dug out beside the seam, and then hundreds of quick, hard-working hands, chipping away at the ore, pulling it loose.

“There’s been mining on this mountain,” I say, although Maidar already told me as much. “They started on the west side and tunneled east, but stopped short of one of the biggest seams.”

“That’s right. There’s not been as much demand for augium in recent years. They closed the mine down,” confirms Maidar. “What else? Go deeper, girl, like with the cup.”

I scrunch up my forehead, concentrating. I try to recall what it was like with the cup, forgetting its shape and form to focus instead on the tiny details of its surface. I study the glittering crystals of augium, tracing their ridges and dips in my mind’s eye. More memories come to me, more brutal than the previous set.

“A battle rages on overhead. The augium can feel the vibrations. The stone is porous, and the metal can taste the traces of spilled blood,” I say, my heart aching with the pain of it, even if it is just echoes of suffering long past.

“That’s surely not the Great Divide?” I hear Ruskin say. “I didn’t think any battles were fought this far into Unseelie territory.”

“They weren’t,” says Maidar excitedly. “She’s remembering something much older than that. The Battle of Xavien, I imagine. The history books put that at three thousand years ago. Keep going,” he urges. “You’ve got more in you still.”

I take a big gulp of air, feeling slightly weak in the legs from the effort, but I look closer again at the augium, until even the tiniest pockmark feels as deep as a valley.

“The world is young,” I say, pulling in the first thread of memories from millennia ago. “The earth is moving. The augium is just finding its place as the mountain shifts around it and?—”

I stop. Something dark and formless lurks beneath these memories—something beyond time, beyond this place. It sits, almost too vast to comprehend, at the edge of my awareness. I’ve gone too far. I try to draw back from it, but I’m too late. The memories come rushing in—thousand and thousands of years of them, too fast to understand, too many to stop. They pile on top of me, my mind aching with the strain of them and the weight grows so much that I fall to my knees. I think I make some noise of distress, then I hear Maidar’s voice from far away.

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