Page 92 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

“Quiet,” Mara snapped, and then she seemed to feel sorry for it and said more gently, “No. Not the caves. Something else.”

We reached a heavy wooden door reinforced with huge iron brackets, and after a slight hesitation, Mara pricked her finger with a needle she took from her pocket and pressed her bloody skin to the door’s flat brass latch. A slight ripple of magic swept past us, raising the hair on my arms, and then the door swung open, revealing a small chamber sunk into the ground a good twenty feet, the only access a narrow set of stone steps.

And in the middle of the room—bound by a dozen chains anchored to the stone wall, the stone ceiling, the stone floor—was a harpy.

At first my mind couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. After years of hearing Olden children’s tales and Gareth’s incessant lectures, I could identify the creature immediately, but I’d never seen one in the flesh. At first my mind refused to accept its existence. She was enormous, twice as tall as Mara, with a broad torso, a hunched back, and wings that would have filled the room if they hadn’t been strapped cruelly to her body. She was, as were all of her kind, part bird, part woman. A startling combination, and much more jarring, more weathered, thanthe Roses’ sleek feathered bodies when they transformed. Her neck was ringed with pale flesh mottled with scabs, and she had a hooked nose, a wide mouth stuffed with fangs, and two round yellow eyes sunken deep into a gaunt skull. A wild mane of brown-and-gray hair crested her head before transitioning into feathers. She crouched within her chains on naked muscled legs tipped with huge black talons. I was glad that at least we could not see her bare torso.

But we could see enough. The wounds on her legs, the festering sores on her neck were fresh, glistening. She had been beaten.

I froze in horror, staring down at her.

Gemma, just behind me, whispered faintly, “Mara, what is this?”

Mara shut the chamber’s door and started down the stairs. “This is Nerys. My unit caught her yesterday, just before we started receiving word about the latest abductions. She was feeling bold, I suppose, knowing what was to happen. Because she did know.” Mara stopped in front of Nerys, nearly nose to nose with the massive creature, whose head hung low, her eyes closed. Mara’s own eyes glittered. “She attacked some of us coming home from a night in Fenwood, caught us by surprise. She got Cira worst of all. She’ll live, but barely. The rest of us managed to get her here, secure her.”

The harpy, Nerys, stirred at the sound of Mara’s voice. She raised her head, a movement both graceful and grotesque. Such fluid motion, and yet there was that grinning mouth of fangs, those sunken eyes. Eyes, I noticed, that didn’t quite meet my sister’s.

“Ah, you’re back,” Nerys rasped—the voice of an old woman, with something glottal rattling wetly underneath. “How I’ve missed you.”

Mara’s hand twitched at her side, drawing my gaze to the spiked club leaning against the chamber wall. My bile rose, and Gemma drew in a sharp breath. Had those wounds on Nerys been inflicted by my sister’s hand? If we weren’t here, would Mara have… I could hardly form the thought.

“Nerys has been resistant to most of our normal methods of extraction,” Mara continued coolly. “She’s old and strong. But not as strong as me.”

The harpy barked out a harsh laugh that rapidly dissolved into a horrific cough. She hocked up a wad of phlegm and spat it, but her aim was poor. It went at least a foot wide of Mara and splatted harmlessly on the floor.

“Fool girl,” growled Nerys. “Strong? If we met on equal terms, without these chains binding me to your floor, I would tear you to ribbons.”

“I’m not sure that you would, or that you even could. You see,” Mara went on, raising her voice, “there’s something about me that Nerys can’t seem to resist. When she looks at me—looks right at me—she starts to talk. Most of it’s nonsense, but every now and then, she’ll let slip an immensely useful nugget of information. Like the location of not just one underground market hub facilitating illegal trade between Edyn and the Old Country, butthreesuch hubs: Yennore, Tenevis, and Irethe, they are called. Their locations, what sort of trade passes through them, what Olden safeguards keep them cloaked from us—and all of this in a day. No, Nerys,” Mara said, a little quieter now, “I think that if we met out there in the world, I could just look at you and tell you to lie down in the dirt, harmless as a fat cat, and you would obey me.”

My growing panic wedged itself into my throat like a knife; I could no longer keep quiet. “I don’t understand. How did you do this?Whyare you doing this?”

The harpy’s head jerked against her chains. She couldn’t move enough to look at me, but her eyes darted about, searching. “Who’s there?” she called out, fresh terror in her voice. “Who did you bring here?”

“Oh, them?” Mara said. “Those are my sisters. I thought you mightwant to meet them. Farrin, Gemma?” She turned back to look at us, and when she met my eyes, her expression faltered just the slightest bit. A hesitation, a flinch.

The sight warmed my cold bones. There was my sister, there in that flicker of uncertainty. Whoever this other person was—this woman with the hard voice and the glittering dark eyes—she hadn’t yet taken over the Mara I knew, not completely.

“No, no, no…” Nerys’s wings strained against her bindings. “No more of you,no more…”

“Come down here and join us,” Mara said. When neither Gemma nor I moved, she whirled on us, blew out a frustrated breath. “Now.Please.We don’t have a lot of time. We don’t know when the next people might be taken, and the Warden—”

Mara stopped, seemed to collect herself. She lifted her chin and looked hard at us. “You want to help our country, the people in it? Alastrina? Gareth?” Her eyes cut to mine. I thought I saw a flicker of something sad cross that cold expression on her face. “Yes, I know he’s been taken, and I’m sorry, Farrin. Now, come here and do something about it. I know neither of you is a coward, nor are you useless. So prove it. Help me.”

I started down the stairs on watery legs, Gemma just behind me. “I don’t understand,” I said again. It seemed the safest thing to say. Perhaps if I got her talking, it would buy us all some time, stop Mara from doing whatever this was, shake some sense into her, shake Gareth’s name and dear face from my mind so I couldthink. If I could only touch Mara’s hand, remind her of herself, this would end. “Tell me how you’re able to persuade such a creature to tell you anything, much less such specific, valuable information—”

“Because of who we are,” Gemma whispered, cutting me off. She grabbed my hand, held me back. “Isn’t that right, Mara? Because of…”

Mara glared at us. “Yes,” she said. “Because of who we are. Shelooks at me, and she can’t help herself. We are the flame, and she is the moth.Because of who we are.”

She said it carefully, not divulging anything too particular. But I knew precisely what she meant.Demigods.My mouth went dry as Philippa’s voice ran through my mind in a relentless loop.Fighting and creating glamours and making music—these things you can already do. But there is more buried in your power, and I can help to find it—

But Kerezen was god of the senses and the body. The power of persuasion seemed more like a trick of the mind—the god Jaetris’s domain.

Then Gemma exhaled shakily. “Sirens,” she whispered. “Succubi, incubi. Even…” She glanced back at me. “Your voice, Farrin.”

An icy curtain of dread dropped through me. Of course. There were other means of persuasion besides powers of the mind. Many Olden creatures crafted by Kerezen’s hand—the fae, the sirens, the succubi and incubi—held powers of the senses, powers of beauty, allure, music, seduction. And then there was me, a mere human savant who could nevertheless bring listeners to their knees and stun monsters like Kilraith—like Ankaret—using only the power of my voice.

Thanks to Philippa, such powers of persuasion lay in our blood. And here was Mara, abusing it without fully understanding it.We should have stayed at Wardwell, I thought, my stomach churning. We should have let Philippa teach us. We weren’t safe. Danger was inherent to our very blood.

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