Effie couldn’t fathom how. She hadn’t called to them, nor had she bade them come to the hilltop. She had not felt their approach, either. They had simply appeared. Yet somehow she knew their allegiance was born of the same kinships she had always known with animals, an innate bond that sprang from her Grundbairn nature.
A gift from her mother, her grandfather, and her unknown ancestors for millennia before that.
Ducking her head around the stane, Effie spied Tallia. The grindylow slashed with the wand, sending another burst streaking into the night. But the crows’ fervor didn’t lessen. They pecked and scratched, squawked and flapped. Tallia and the bogills swatted with arms too slow and clumsy for the crows. Blood welled in gashes on their faces. Fiery red welts rose on their exposed flesh.
The wulvers leapt and snapped their jaws at the birds. Quicker than their masters, they pulled down crows by the maw-full. Effie cringed at the sight but knew she could do nothing to stop the beasts. She had only her bare hands and not even Fey Craft to aid her.
Her feet moved all the same. She stumbled across the hilltop in a scamper. The crows parted for her, darting for the wulvers who dared rush forward, and creating a wall against the bogills.
Tallia saw her come. She swiped at a crow with her free hand and brought the other up, leveling the glowing device toward Effie. Its stardust tip flared, turning white with heat. The grindylow’s face scrunched. Her brow pulled low and lips quivered in a sneer.
Effie’s legs churned, but her stride was not long enough. She wouldn’t reach the grindylow in time, not before the stardust burst tore through her. Grunting, she pumped her arms harder. She willed herself to fly as fast as the crows.
Drawing back the wand, Tallia snapped her wrist. As she did, a crow swooped past in a streak of long black feathers and short brown tufts. Its claws snatched at the wand, knocking it aside.
Effie shivered as the burst of stardust streaked past her. Its heat felt like that of a roaring fire thrust against her flesh. But unlike the last time she faced Tallia, she did not raise her arm or dive aside. Instead, she kept on and lowered her shoulder.
She caught the grindylow in the gut. The pair tumbled over and landed hard against the beaten earth of the hilltop. The impact drove the breath from Effie. Tallia’s sharp nails raked across her back. They gouged painful lines, but her coat stood against them, keeping her flesh from ripping apart. She kicked and rolled aside. Her eyes scoured the ground searching for the stardust device. She found it just as Tallia plucked it from the grass.
The grindylow loomed over her. Effie tensed, heart thumping. The azure glow of the device’s tip wavered a few feet from her head.
One of the bogills cried out, his bellow raised above the din of the crows. Effie didn’t dare take her eyes from Tallia, but she felt what had happened. She knew Gaelyph had come. Her fey senses flooded into her as half the fetid weeds restraining them dissolved into nothing. She ripped away the rest with a giant surge of Fey Craft.
She didn’t wait for Tallia to react. She formed a simple glamour, producing a shimmering green orb that hung between her hands. To it, she added heat. When it began to singe her flesh, she let it float higher before her and conjured a wave of mist to seep from the ground. The cool vapors billowed upward and kissed the orb, letting off a blanket of steam.
Tallia’s gaze narrowed. “What’s this? Do you think simple tricks can fool me?”
Effie felt pressure against her glamour. She enlarged the orb and flattened it. Raising it before her like a shield, she caused the mist billowing about the hilltop to rain sparks like emeralds falling in a hailstorm. She let the whim of her senses take over while she listened. She could feel Gaelyph and the other bogill circling in a dance nearby. The swooshing of a sword cut through the night. Across the hilltop, wulvers snapped at the crows, while the birds screeched their challenge in return. In the distance, thunder began to build.
Tallia cackled at the display.
“Is that what you have learned?” Her tongue clucked. She swatted aside a hooded crow that darted for her nose. “It displeases me that Mother gives you such credence. In Edinburgh, you stole away my playthings and left no greater challenge than what a sheep faces to produce a dropping.”
Her head cocked to the side. A shiver passed through her. “Yes.” She hissed the word, and Effie realized it was not for her own ears. Tallia spoke to another, someone who watched from afar. The grindylow waved her open hand and yanked it back. Effie’s glamour was ripped from her control. The weight of the flattened green shield shoved against her and flung her to the ground. It pressed against her chest like a slab of stone.
“Mother begs of me,” Tallia snarled. She thrust the stardust device at Effie. “Tell me where it is, and perhaps I won’t make you suffer…too much.”
Effie blinked. She tried to deduce what the fey woman might mean, that which the Barrow Witch coveted, but she could not think of a thing that would cause Tallia to delay the killing stroke. The Unseily had the steward. They had allies from the continent and those they needed to invade Elphame. The armies of London could not stop them. They knew not where the host gathered, and even if they did, the banshee’s touch would rip through their ranks.
“Your flesh is failing you, as are your wits, Tallia.” Effie spat the words. She knew not what else to do. Even knowing the glamour for a trick, she could not free herself from its weight. Its heat scalded her flesh. Her breath came in shallow gasps. “Are you now a leashed pet made to heel?”
She risked a glance for Gaelyph. The mist she had conjured had dissipated, but she could not spy the warden, nor the remaining bogill. She knew only that they fought near the stanes on the far side of the circle.
The once-distant thunder rumbled louder, coming closer. The wulvers began to howl a cry of warning.
Tallia didn’t notice. She bared decaying teeth that had broken and turned yellow. “Tell me!” she screamed. “You must have it. It is your nature to seize control. You do not trust your pathetic allies!” She marched forward and shoved the stardust device into Effie’s face.
Effie blinked away the sudden brilliance. When her vision cleared, she saw clearly for the first time the object lashed to the device’s tip. It was a stone covered in runes. A thunderstone meant to channel stardust rather than divine Aerfenium.
The riddle fell into place. The Aerfenium thunderstone—that was what the Barrow Witch coveted, the reason why Tallia had not yet killed her. Effie tipped her head back and laughed. Tallia and her Mother believed Effie foolish enough to have brought the stone with her, that her lack of faith in the Seily Court, in those from Elphame, and in London would drive her to be selfish and act in solitude.
But she did trust. She trusted in the duke and the soldiers who’d fought at Caldwell House. She trusted in Caledon and Jaelyn and Rose. She trusted in Stuart Graham and Thomas Stevenson, and so many others. She’d even trusted in Jack Canonbie after he’d betrayed her. And if she once doubted Gaelyph, she trusted in him now.
She was a part of them all and they a part of her. She didn’t need Fey Craft to know that for the truth. Her family, her community, needed no such tricks.
“Tell me!” Tallia shrieked. She flung her wrist forward.
A blast of stardust burst from the wand. It exploded into the ground next to Effie’s head. Chips of rock and mud showered her. Effie grinned. The thunder had reached the hilltop. Rifles cracked in a volley. The wulvers’ howls turned to yelps.