Page 102 of The Iron Dagger
Hara remembered the word the fae used for their queens: rexina. She recalled in her book of royalty that the sitting fae ruler was Rexina Armot. Could this woman be fae royalty? The text did not mention her name.
“You were banished?” said Hara, looking from the woman to the man.
“We have lived away from our people for many years. But we have watched the city below transform into something it was never meant to be. And our people still do not have a place at the new court. They were only tools.”
“Will we meet with any trouble from them if we go to the glacier?” asked Gideon. “Do they post sentries to guard it?”
The woman turned her unsettling eyes slowly to Gideon, as though he had asked an odd question. “The stone needs no guardian. Any who attempt to go near it perish or are trapped for all time.”
“That is not true,” said Hara, remembering the brief glimpses she had seen of Turnswallow plummeting into an icy hole in her visions. After seeing the hole in Corvus’ memory, she now knew what it was. “A sorcerer named Turnswallow found a way out. He fell in and somehow escaped.”
The fae woman’s eyes flickered to the man’s for the briefest moment, but Hara caught it. “What is it? What do you know?”
“There is a saying we have in fae when it comes to reversing enchantments: ‘retrace and do the hard thing,’” said the man. “Turnswallow spent some time among us, learning our ways. He may have found a way to escape by using this idea.”
“But what does it mean?” asked Gideon.
“It is not always clear until you are under the enchantment. But each journey follows a path of events. You must return and complete a loop. A circle, if you will.”
“There is magic in cycles,” said Gideon, and Hara could not suppress the upward turn of her lips. The fae woman nodded.
“You must go back the way you came. But why are you asking about this? Surely you do not mean to enter the Maw and live to tell about it?”
“I am,” said Hara. “I wish to find my mother and free her.”
“I do not want to give you false hope. It may not work,” said the woman.
“But it often does,” said the man. “The stone is not of fae design, but all magic tends to favor certain patterns.”
“Do not take a fae trick and believe it to be true, Angharad,” Seith’s voice suddenly rang out. “They do not study or make record of magic as we do. They have no training or history to turn to, only superstition. There must be another way, and if Turnswallow could decipher it, then we can as well.”
Irritation burned in Hara. The fae had revered the stone for an age, and he had the audacity to disparage their wisdom? If Seith wanted her to delay and puzzle it out, he could wish until he turned blue.
“I’ll trust the word of the fae a thousand times before I would trust a murderer and a traitor,” she said coldly.
Seith’s shoulders slumped, cowed by her tone. The woman and the man seemed startled by her words, but they did not seem upset. On the contrary, the woman’s lips were parted in awe. Perhaps it was the first time they had ever heard a witch take their side in anything.
“Is there anything else you could tell me about the Maw?” she asked the woman.
“Only fae lore, but I do not think that would help your cause. We are not natural Seers, and so the stone may work differently for us than it would for you,” said the woman. “I cannot tell you what will be waiting for you down there. But I wish you luck in abundance.”
By the time Hara’s clothing was dry, it was late afternoon. They departed the small underground burrow on the riverbank where the fae couple had made their home, and Hara glanced back. Seraphine was perched on the fae man’s shoulder, watching her leave with large eyes. Hara did not know when they would return, and she wanted to make sure her familiar was wellcared for.If we return, the unpleasant thought whispered in the back of her mind.
Seith had insisted that he accompany them, but Hara refused. She did not care if he saved her life in the river. In her eyes, nothing could redeem him, and it did not take long for Gideon to catch on.
“I know things about magic that neither of you do,” Seith said earnestly. “I was educated by the great sorcerer Yasbar and the strategist Helsin.”
“I would have been, too, if you hadn’t stolen my life and my childhood,” spat Hara, turning to leave. “We don’t need you.”
“Why haven’t you tried to enter the stone yourself in all this time?” asked Gideon. “Why wait until now to try and free Desideria?”
Hara paused in her livid stomping and turned to see what Seith would say.
“I thought . . . I thought she might be angry with me,” said Seith, avoiding their eyes. “I couldn’t face her.”
“Your cowardice makes me retch,” said Hara, turning her back on him again.
“But think about it, Angharad. If you and I freed her, perhaps—perhaps we could free the others as well.”
