Page 4

And pulled out yet another leaf.

“How did you do that?”she breathed as if I’d just performed the world’s greatest magic trick.

“I didn’t.There used to be a great oak down that way,” I nodded at the far end of the concourse.“The witches who lived here could make seats for themselves by spilling water on a platform they’d caused to grow inside the hollow trunk.They just pulled them up from the wood, like plucking mushrooms,” I showed her with my hand.“It was some kind of spell—”

Pritkin said a word I didn’t know, but I guessed Enid did as her eyes got big.

“But that’s Blarestri magic!”she said, looking almost shocked.

“In Faerie.Here, there are no such restrictions,” he told her.“The witches learned their craft from the Old Ones who live in the mountains—” he paused.“Who used to live in the mountains,” he added more softly.“They taught them a unified system.”

“Why was it not so in Faerie, then?”Enid asked, her eyes sliding from him to Æsubrand, who was trying to roast some small creature on a stick over the flames.“Before you two, I had never thought to meet anyone with all four elements.It was unheard of!”

“It wasn’t common, even here,” Pritkin said, glancing about at the destruction, expressionless.“But many of the people who built this place had two or even a weak third talent, and they all lived together, so what one couldn’t provide, another did.”

“Yet on our world, where the magic originated, we were so separate,” she said, frowning at the little plant.And then looked up, her color high.“Perhaps we could have fought the gods better if we hadn’t been!”

“You’ve answered your own question,” Bodil commented.She had been tending our pot and seemed satisfied as she pulled it off the fire and divvied its contents into fire-blackened bowls.

“What?”

“The gods separated the different streams of magic, giving only one to each of their groups of ‘children’ and killing anyone who dared find a way to have more.”

She glanced at Pritkin and Æsubrand, the latter of whom looked uncomfortable, although that could have just been the effect of her remarkable eyes.They were back to black now, but it didn’t make much difference.Bodil could cow the gods themselves.

“They wanted us to be separate and warring with each other,” she added.“So that we could never unite to fight against them.And they achieved their goal.”

“But he has all four elements,” Enid said, nodding at Æsubrand.

He looked rough, crouched on the dirty cobbles with only about half of his once sleek suit of dragonscale still in place.He’d lost the helmet and a single greave, along with the chest piece of his cuirass, but had used his belt to strap the back piece in place and stabilize the suit.He had acid burns on his chest from the battle to get here, and his formerly sleek, silver-blond hair was frazzled, having dried without any of the usual toiletries the fey used to keep their pride and joy in place.

He also looked like a man who just wanted to eat his groundhog or whatever in peace.

He had found a replacement for his once beautiful and now destroyed sword, however, in the form of a rusty pike.I didn’t know if he’d picked it up here, because some of the witches liked old-fashioned weapons as much as the fey, or had obtained it from Faerie before we left.But I suspected the latter.

It was old and ugly, but he had it cradled in the crook of one arm like the finest of blades.And like a man who was nervous about being attacked again.Or perhaps there was a different reason.

I realized it might be one of the only things left from his homeworld.

“Yes, his father made sure of it,” Bodil was saying.“He deliberately married a woman with the powers he lacked.But that was after the gods were gone, and the rules relaxed, and was done to help them return.Although they would have likely killed the prince eventually had he not escaped with us.”

The latter was said casually, almost as an aside, but it seemed to put Æsubrand off his meal.Or maybe that was the tiny, dangling feet of his treat hanging off the stick.They would have done it for me.

But not for Alphonse, the big vamp, who, unlike most of his kind, liked to eat just fine.And while he didn’t need the nourishment, I guessed the familiar action was soothing.He picked up the discarded stick and helped himself, tearing into the small body with evident relish.

Æsubrand accepted a bowl of soup from Bodil without comment.

There was a mostly intact teashop down the road, which I guessed they’d raided for supplies.In place of the pot, a dull brass kettle with enough dings and scratches to bear witness to a long life of teamaking was plopped onto the fire while the bowls finished being passed around.

It surprised me despite the good smells that had woken me up.“How did you make this?”I asked as Bodil handed me a bowl and spoon.

“Garden up top,” she said shortly, gesturing vaguely at the ceiling.“Ran rampant all these years, but some plants survived.And those little creatures—”

She looked at Pritkin, who started to supply a name, then glanced at me and stopped.Which meant that this probably wasn’t groundhog.I looked at my bowl but then shrugged and ate it anyway.

I was freaking ravenous.

“At any rate, they are plentiful,” Bodil said.“We will not starve, at least.”