Far across the field, she heard the roar of a charge. Lieutenant Walford’s soldiers broke free of the tree line and surged across the grassy span to the base of the hillfort. They were met with spears and hurled rocks, but their numbers kept the advance. Smoke burst in puffs from the gnomes’ blunderbusses. Whistles shrilled. Red coats clumped and spread out like ants falling on biscuit crumbs.
Effie strained to spy Conall, but as well spot a midge from the far bank of a loch. She scoured for his aura, her concern welling. But the effort left her open. She had to abandon it.
Weeds born of Fey Craft snatched at her. She flicked fire at them deftly and without thought. They hissed as they singed and shriveled away. She allowed Rose to consume the bulk of her strength of blood. The elder fey woman worked what tricks she could, but Effie could spare no attention for them.
Soon! The sending from Rose startled Effie with its ferocity. It stole what little warmth she had left. Soon the Unseily host would invade Elphame and join in battle there. She imagined the lords of London would consider the fate just—a fey end to a fey problem. But the Barrow Witch would not stop there. With Elphame conquered, her host would stand large enough to sweep through the empire and spread across the continent. To allow her Elphame was to allow her all of Europe and more.
A trickle of blood ran along Effie’s arm. She hadn’t felt the cut and knew not whether it came from spear or scrape. She fixated on the bead’s progress and let it form her thoughts. Pressing both palms against the embankment, Effie closed her eyes and delved. She caressed the thin yet hardy roots of the grassy slope, felt the moist soil beneath, and deeper still the tiny channels of water that fed life into the flora.
If she could pull more water into the roots, perhaps she could bend the grass to her will. She had done such a thing before, in Glasgow. But she had now neither the strength of Caledon’s blood, nor the sacrifice of Jack Canonbie.
The water seeped meekly toward her. Her arms shook from the effort. Her heart thumped against her breast. The world spun, and she gasped, collapsing against the embankment.
It would not work. The hillfort was too large, her need too great.
But she had sensed something buried beneath the roots and rock and earth. It was something she hadn’t fathomed would exist there, but something she could use to her advantage, if given the chance.
“Along here,” said Gaelyph. He didn’t wait for her reply. He set off along the embankment, hugged against its grassy protection.
Effie followed. Exhausted from her delving, she stumbled the first few steps, fighting the urge to slump to the ground. She found one of the spriggans’ spears and grabbed onto it. It had not the sturdiness of the cane, but it returned a steadiness to her.
The warden led them to a place where the slope of the embankment lessened. They scaled quickly and mounted the level area atop the first ring of the hillfort. The path there was wide enough for perhaps three abreast before the slope resumed its climb toward the height of the second ring.
Wulvers streaked toward them. Effie took in the slit of yellow eyes and slathered fangs as the things barreled past spriggans and goblins. Their legs churned low and fast to the ground.
Soon. They could not scale any higher. The wulvers would tear them down from behind if they tried. We are too late.
Effie braced herself. She levelled the flimsy spear. The lead wulver leapt. She ducked under it and thrust the spear beneath its ribs. Its claws raked her shoulder. Fire burned where it touched.
The impact knocked her down. The spear snapped from her grip. She kicked and punched, her hands meeting coarse fur and her feet hard bone. One of the creatures rose to its hind legs and leered over her. Delving into its mind, she ripped at the binds of its Unseily masters. She flooded it with images of greater prey—of thick deer and fat hares. Those, it wanted, not her, she tried to convince the wulver.
It faltered, turning its head aside and sniffing the air.
The weeds of Fey Craft slithering from the grindylows surged. The strands doubled, growing thicker, their thorns sharper. Effie cried out from the phantom pain. Her bursts of fire could not keep the weeds at bay.
Soon! Effie gritted her teeth. Her cries became a growling challenge. Anger flared from an inner part of her. How could the Unseily enter Elphame when even she knew not the way? No, she corrected herself. She had not been allowed the way. She had been barred, the secret kept from her because she had not been trusted.
Not as the grindylows, once Sithlings of the Seily Court, had been.
Her breath caught. “Fool lass.” She spat the words. The fire of her wounds dulled as the chill of the falling snow numbed her flesh.
Lashing onto one of the thorny weeds, Effie spun strands of her own phantom grass and wove it tight against the shoot. She sensed the grindylow attempt to dissolve the weed, but she would not let go. Snaking her grass strands up the slope, Effie entangled them with the weeds until they had locked into an impenetrable knot.
She had been a fool earlier. She had no need to bend anything to her will other than the grindylows. The Fey Craft of linking and blocking were intertwined. Tallia had unwittingly passed her that knowledge in the bowels of Edinburgh.
Rose understood her gambit, and Effie felt her full blood strength return, bolstered by her friend’s own. The rush of sensations surprised her. Within the span of a breath, she could feel each and every living thing atop the hillfort—and beneath it.
The grindylows recoiled. Their snares of weed and thorn shrank back as Effie’s grassy tethers surged. But she would not let them go so easily. She had started to sense another Fey Craft at work. With a flicker of thought, her tethers became a sticky web that entangled a dozen of the grindylows. She could feel them ripping and tearing as she had done to counter their assault. Her webs spread and thickened.
The Fey Craft she sensed flexed as if it were a kaleidoscope. Images flashed through her link to the Unseily. A blanket of stars rotated around a silvery moon. Beneath, steep crags gave way to the bowl of a long and narrow glen. The image burst, replaced by that of a rough sea, white caps spraying foam in violent gusts.
An anchor, Effie recalled from what Rose had said at Skye. They sought an anchor into Elphame, the aura of a fey known to at least one of them. That was how the traveling worked.
A rough hand grabbed her by the waist and pulled. She stumbled back a step, only vaguely aware of a sword flashing before her and of the squeal of some creature. Labored breathing reached her ears. Sergeant McGrady had come. The man had lost his helmet and half his mustache. His men fired up the slope to the second ring.
Effie shaped an image, that of an ancient oak. She thought it a fitting device to counter the Barrow Witch’s host. Tendrils of moss dripped from its limbs. A deep hollow shadowed its upper trunk. Its leaves had turned a bevy of reds, yellows, and oranges. The tips of its branches swayed under a breeze.
If the Unseily needed to fix on an aura, she would divert them with one of her own.
The oak pulsed through her web, through the link she held tethering the Unseily. The grindylows shoved against her, yanking and ripping at the web strands. Rose worked with her, she could tell, but Effie did not have the elder fey’s subtlety. She stood her ground as stubbornly as the tree she conjured. Her body trembled. She panted. Her throat ran dry.
The grindylows fought for their anchor into Elphame. They scraped at the oak, turning it to ash. The glen returned, sprouting in its place. Effie devoured it and regrew the oak. The sea, she drained when it came again. The images the Unseily spun began to imprint in her mind, yet with each cycle her strength waned.