Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(35)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

Behind us, several of the Hollowers, including Emrys, had pulled on their head lamps and switched them on. Their beams tracked against the thick wall of mist ensconcing us, only to converge on two dark shadows in the near distance.

 

We stood at the edge of a body of water—if it could even be called water. It was a vile ooze, thick with clumps of black, tarry mud. My pulse throbbed at my temples.

 

“Is this Avalon?” Cabell asked hoarsely.

 

A muscle feathered in Emrys’s tight jaw as he came forward and studied the water. His eyes slid toward mine and I knew, without him having to say the words, that his thoughts were perfectly aligned with mine.

 

Something isn’t right.

 

The dark shapes in the mist took final form as two flat barges parted the white fog and floated toward us. The lanterns hanging from the hooks on their far ends were unlit and creaked with the faint swaying of the vessels.

 

For a moment, no one dared to move. A rivulet of icy sweat trickled down my spine.

 

“Ladies first,” Septimus said, sweeping his hand toward the nearer barge.

 

My stomach was a knot as I stepped over the low rail of the barge and into the sludge of soggy leaves that had collected on the flat deck.

 

Neve followed with her head held high, careful not to slip as we moved toward the far end. Emrys had his own axe in his hand as he gestured for Cabell to fall in line beside us. The relief I felt at not being separated from my brother on different barges was short-lived; Emrys seemed intent on standing directly behind me, close enough for me to feel the heat coming off his body.

 

The other Hollowers, all dozen of them, hesitated to follow, looking very much like they were rethinking this job.

 

“Get a move on,” Septimus barked. “Or there’ll be no pay!”

 

In sharp contrast to the others, Septimus looked invigorated—triumphant, even splattered in dark mud, with his ratty hair whipping loose of its tie. He kicked the other barge off the bank and then jumped onto ours. The barge rocked as his weight was added, and it needed no help to dislodge itself from that strange shore. I turned one last time, frantically trying to commit the location of the portal, and our way back, to memory.

 

There was no current in the stagnant water that I could see, but the barges moved forward all the same, floating inexorably toward some unknown destination.

 

An odd bump-bump-bump rose up around us, and it seemed to have no source until Neve suddenly pulled back from the edge of the barge with a strangled sound. I leaned forward, cursing my own damned curiosity.

 

Rather than clumps of moss or earthy decay, the water was littered with the bodies of birds and the pallid bellies of rotten fish. Bile burned up my throat.

 

Threads of sickly yellow mist wove themselves through the white, and within seconds, the air had turned dark and bitter. The putrid color deepened and became a foul haze that reeked of brackish hell.

 

Neve coughed violently; I could barely see her through the mist and tears that streamed down from my burning eyes. Several of the Hollowers began retching.

 

“Where has the hag taken us?” Septimus demanded.

 

No one had an answer for him.

 

Noxious vapors stewed around us, roiling, parting enough to torment us with glimpses of the Otherland. A black sky. Shards of giant boulders, jutting up from beneath the water like teeth. The dismembered pieces of what had once likely been a colossal statue of a woman.

 

An upturned stone hand, collecting dank water and filth, was nearly the size of the barge. But it was the sight of the woman’s head, half submerged in the water, that left me trembling. A mud-crusted snake slid through a crack in the statue’s eye, disappearing into the rancid water.

 

Neve pressed a hand to her throat, looking as though someone had reached inside her chest and ripped out her lungs.

 

“Goddess,” she whispered, and nothing more.

 

The beams from the Hollowers’ head lamps scored the mist, piercing it in places. The men were communicating with each other using the kind of sly, quick looks and deep frowns that promised mutiny.

 

I was startled out of my thoughts by a soft touch on my arm. Emrys pressed something hard and cold into my hand—a pocketknife. I bit my lip as he leaned his long body around mine and reached for a crooked post jutting out of the water.

 

His expression was almost pained as the post crumbled to sooty dust at the first brush of his gloved fingers.

 

It wasn’t until I saw the enormous roots rising above the water like serpents, strangling one another, that I realized what they were.

 

Trees.

 

None of us were aware of how close we were to the waiting shore, not until the barge slammed up against something, nearly throwing us into the ooze.

 

This time, Septimus was the first to step down, his face screwing up in disgust as his boots stuck in the thick mud. The mist thinned with our movement as we followed, trudging forward.

 

There had to have been thousands of trees here, once titans in height and breadth. Their remnants had either hardened and hollowed or turned gray as ash. Emrys couldn’t stop staring at them, his forehead creased.

 

“What is this?” he asked quietly. “What could possibly rot them this way?”

 

The few leaves that remained were withered. The mulch of decayed growth littered the forest floor, in some places several feet high. A dry streambed had become nothing more than a final resting place for an unspeakable number of dead creatures.

 

The group spread out as we made our way through the trees.

 

Neve was at my back, her wand clutched in her hand. Cabell fell in place beside me, retrieving my axe from where it had been tied to my traveling pack.

 

I felt hyperaware of each step I took, not just because of the grasping mud but also the faint jangle of my belongings.

 

“There should be villages scattered around the isle,” Neve whispered.

 

“Are there any other landmarks we can look for?” I asked as quietly as I could.

 

“There’s a tower at the center of Avalon,” Neve said. “That’s where its order of priestesses is said to reside. The nine sisters.”

 

Right. Right, I’d seen that mentioned in a handful of the Immortalities. Though as the years had gone on and the generations of sorceresses had grown more distant from their ancestral home, the details around the priestesses had become just as inaccurate as most fairy tales.

 

“I’m starting to think we’re the only ones here,” Cabell muttered, moving ahead of me. “At least the only ones still breathing.”