“A great master carved this,” said the gnome. “I have never seen or even heard tale of its like.” He held aloft the thunderstone pinched between his finger and thumb.
“But you determined it does indeed find Aerfenium,” said Effie. She set her bowl aside and stood. “And how to activate it?”
Dust puffed from the gnome’s peat-smudged coat as he turned to her and absently patted his chest. From the lenses he wore, his eyes appeared as large orbs. He gave a wary nod.
“Gods of old,” cursed one of the Sithlings. “It is a danger to have such a thing here. The Unseily will come for it!”
“We must protect it,” said a hogboon. He rose and stepped onto the wooden stump he’d been sitting on. “We must secret it away and bury it.”
“Fool,” barked Jaelyn. The brownie glared. “Let the Unseily come. If we knew where they be, we could make an end of them.”
“What if they don’t need the stone?” squeaked a pixie. The wee thing flitted past Effie in a burst of pink wings. The pixie waved her arms. “What if they’ve already used it?”
“I don’t believe it is that precise,” said Effie. She had considered the question earlier. “The Unseily we claimed it from still seemed to blunder into the Aerfenium cache, even when they stood on top of it.”
“Aye,” said the Rocksoother. “The stone grants only impressions of direction, as if sensing an aura.”
“Like a compass needle,” said Rose. The fey woman had wrapped a green and blue tartan blanket about her shoulders. It made her appear older than Effie normally took her to be.
“So we may yet reach the caches first and protect them,” said Ana. She thrust back her shoulders. “I will proudly undertake that task.”
“As will we, the Order of Freiwald,” proclaimed Freiherr Jörg.
A chorus of muttering echoed around the bonfire. Effie saw several heads nodding, but others glared and threw up their arms. One of the hogboons spat. His companion, who had spoken earlier, reclaimed his stump.
“The stone must never fall into the hands of one not appointed by the steward,” he said. “Nor one not of our court.”
Freiherr Jörg nodded kindly. “We are not asking permission, friend hogboon.”
“The wards of Aerfenium are the only thing holding back an onslaught of Sidhe Bhreige,” said Effie. “We must rally any we can to protect the caches, without question.”
“What of the greater danger?” asked a Sithling. “The French have invaded. No doubt their German cousins will soon follow. What good is defending against the Sidhe Bhreige only to be enslaved by the continent?”
“That is not our concern,” said the hogboon. “Let them fight. We need only worry about the Unseily.”
“Hide,” said another of the Sithlings. “Why not hide ourselves until the queen’s regiments have destroyed this Barrow Witch and her minions?”
“Because they will not succeed without your help, and soon you would all face becoming Unseily yourselves.” Conall’s voice boomed across the dell. Several of the Sithlings startled and pulled aside to reveal him. He strode into the firelight with Jane Porter and Edgar Talmadge in tow. A buxom and comely lass, Jane wore a plain dress of white stitched with sprigs of mistletoe at the hem. A leather circlet kept her auburn tresses in place.
The guards from the Order of Freiwald had marched from the tents with their charges. They held their blunderbusses levelled at the humans but remained silent.
“Bah, we’ve destroyed the grindylows and bogills we’ve faced thus far and can do so again,” said Jaelyn.
Effie ignored the brownie’s bluster. She caught something in Jane’s expression. The lass who had devoted herself to Effie and to the auld ways of the Oak Seers—the human term for Grundbairns—stood with pleading eyes. Her hands wrung before her stomach.
“What is it?” asked Effie. She found herself striding toward the lass. Gareth padded at her heels.
The hogboon who’d spat hollered. “It is not proper that she should speak at our moot!”
“Wheesht!” snapped Rose.
Jane swallowed. Her eyes darted over the gathering. She curtsied as Effie approached, a habit Effie hadn’t been able to yet shake her of. “My lady, it’s just…I’ve spoken with Miss Bowman.” She curtsied again, as if to apologize for the fact. “She told me of her family and of the village of Braemuir. She remembered the blue ribbon her father purchased for her last Hogmanay, and the ring her mother gave her that had once been her nans’. She described both in detail.”
Effie shot a look to Conall. He nodded encouragement. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“Don’t you see?” Jane begged. “Her will dissolves, her aura changes, but she remembers everything.”
Thoughts of Tallia snapped into Effie’s mind. The woman had sought revenge even after sacrificing herself to the Barrow Witch’s alchemy and becoming a grindylow. But she couldn’t yet fathom what Jane hinted at.
Rose gasped. “Elphame,” she whispered. “You mean that with enough strength of fey blood, the Unseily would be able to reach Elphame.”
Jane nodded furiously. “With Fey Craft and the ability to scheme intelligently, their host is not confined to this empire like the Laird’s trows and Piper’s wulvers. Where better to bolster their number than a place inhabited by other fey?”
“They would only need someone to show them the way,” said Conall. “Someone who travels between worlds with ease.” He stared at Effie, and she felt the ground tilt beneath her.
“Someone with a steward’s blood,” she said, closing her eyes.
18
“We are nowhere safe!” squealed one of the pixies. The host erupted into a frenzy. The hogboons muttered among themselves, waving their pudgy arms. One of the Sithlings shuddered hard enough to force him to his knees. His companion stood in shock. He blinked, his head twitching like a chicken after corn.
Rose grabbed Effie’s arm. “Conall has it wrong. It needn’t be the steward. Aye, Caledon has the strength and kens the way better than any other, but any with the knowledge could lead them if their host had the strength.”
The broth soured in Effie’s gut. “But I thought such a thing wasn’t possible,” she said. “That the Sidhe Bhreige were too corrupt to reach Elphame.”
“Unseily are not Sidhe Bhreige, Grundbairn,” said Jaelyn. The brownie planted herself next to Rose. “Tainted they may be, but they remain kin of the queen.”
“The Queen of Summer,” whispered Jane. Her eyes grew as wide as moons.
Effie startled. A voice sounded in her head, mocking her. The usurping queen. She will perish swinging from her own tree. I will see to it. Her blood ran cold. They had been wrong all along. The Barrow Witch cared little for the fall of London. Humans posed no threat to her mind. They were a swarm of midges she could swat aside whenever it pleased her. She craved revenge. Revenge against the fey responsible for her imprisonment. Revenge against the Seily Court.
“It’s a distraction,” she said. “All of it. The banshee’s touch, the attacks on the coast. She gathers an army for a single purpose—to slay the daughter of Righm and rule over Elphame.”