Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(39)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

We had all accepted having our hands bound yet again as the condition for riding with them—accepted being the only option aside from being left there to be eaten.

 

Neve had been placed behind Caitriona of the Nine. All the priestesses rode stiff-backed because of their metal cuirass—a chest plate that extended around their backs—but with Caitriona, the armor seemed to conform to her body instead of the other way around.

 

We passed through a maze of dark wilderness and mist. My inner thighs were soaked through with the horse’s foaming sweat and from the strain of having to squeeze them tight to keep from being bucked off.

 

“You can hold on to me,” my knight said quietly. “I’d rather not have to stop and pick you up if you fall and crack your skull, if it’s all the same to you?”

 

I snorted. “Fine by me.”

 

My hands were only loosely bound, which made it easier to grip the bottom edge of the armor around her back.

 

“Do you have a name, or are you just of the Nine?” I asked.

 

Now it was her turn to snort. “Betrys. Of the Nine.”

 

“All right, Betrys,” I said, some of my frustration falling away. “Thanks, by the way.”

 

“No thanks are needed,” she said, her voice quiet and dignified. “It is our responsibility to protect the isle and those living within it.”

 

“That”—I tried to think of a delicate way to put it—“seems complicated. Is all of Avalon like this?”

 

Betrys fell back into that tightly held silence, gently kicking the horse to drive it faster.

 

I glanced over to where Cabell—naturally—seemed perfectly at ease riding behind another of the knights, a girl with pale skin and close-cropped hair the color of bark. They spoke quietly. He caught my eye and gave me a smile that was too grim to be reassuring.

 

The Nine. The order of priestesses who conducted the rituals of Avalon and directed the worship of the creator Goddess they believed in.

 

Apparently, they’d undergone a bit of rebranding in the last several hundred years, because I had no memories of reading about them barreling through the shadows of the isle on horseback to battle monsters. And Nash, a loyal servant to hyperbole and lover of exaggeration, wouldn’t have left such a dramatic detail out of his campfire tales.

 

The name slid through my heart like a blade. Nash.

 

Until now, I’d been so consumed with survival that I hadn’t been able to think of anything else, including the reason we’d come in the first place.

 

I cast my gaze around the shadowed land, wondering how Nash could possibly have survived this place. The rotting trees, the barren streambed that had become a trail for the horses, swarms of insects stripping the rotting flesh from the bones of one of the monsters, stone cottages with no lights inside . . . What could survive here beyond scavengers and creatures who lived only to sate their hunger?

 

The mist was inescapable, hovering above the land like a chilling manifestation of resentment—of lost love, of lost beauty, of whatever this place had once been. Its damp fingers traced icy patterns into my skin.

 

The tower Neve had described took its time in revealing itself, as if needing to watch us from a distance to decide whether to allow us to approach. As we came closer, my eyes couldn’t devour the sight of it quickly enough. The sheer size of the tower and the imposing walls that surrounded it left me light-headed.

 

And that was before I realized it had been built into the trunk of a colossal tree.

 

Stark branches fanned out over the walls, sheltering the courtyard below from the black, starless sky. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. The tree primitive and ancient, the tower medieval, speaking to the last contact this Otherland had with our mortal world.

 

The Immortalities I’d read were created long after the last sorceresses had been exiled from Avalon. None had seen this very sight with their own eyes.

 

“What’s that tree?” I asked Betrys.

 

“We call it the Mother,” she said. “It was the first life on the isle. The first gift of the Goddess.”

 

The deep moat around the structure held only a few feet of murky water and far more sickly weeds, but it was still impossible to cross without a bridge. I was relieved to see torches burning along the wall, and the shapes of men and women high above us.

 

“Open the gates!” the silver-haired knight called. Her horse danced on the stones of the path, as anxious as the rest of us to get inside.

 

The old wooden drawbridge lumbered down slowly, groaning with its own weight. Its edge had barely touched the ground in front of her when she charged across it. A metal portcullis lifted from within the walls, revealing the shadowed courtyard beyond it.

 

Betrys and I brought up the rear of the group, and no sooner had we passed through it than the portcullis lowered and the bridge rose.

 

Several men wearing chest plates, some armed with crude-looking swords, others with simple bows, rushed up to us.

 

“Blessed Mother,” one said as the silver-haired knight swung down from her horse. “Were they . . .”

 

“The source of the light?” Betrys finished. “Yes. Can you take the horses?”

 

“But—” another man began, staring at us with something akin to shock and fascination. “Who are they?”

 

Betrys slid down from her saddle and reached up to help me. I hadn’t appreciated how tall—or strong—she was until she all but lifted me off the horse like a snot-nosed kid.

 

“Do what Caitriona says,” she whispered to me. “Do not fight whatever she has planned. We shall have this sorted soon, but she has a protocol she prefers to follow.”

 

She led us around the impressive tower, through gaps between rough-hewn buildings and hastily built wooden structures, and past a small dirt arena, complete with archery targets, blade-battered posts, and straw-stuffed dummies.

 

Caitriona marched us on, guiding Neve by the shoulder, to a narrow, winding staircase nestled inside the far right corner of the wall. Rather than up to the ramparts, we went down.

 

And down.

 

And down.

 

I slowed, but Betrys nudged me on. The stench of straw, rat droppings, and mildew met us at the threshold, a dire warning of what we would find inside the chamber.

 

As Caitriona stepped inside and removed a heavy ring of keys from a hook on the wall, the candles lining the narrow walkway flickered with sudden fire. They burned away the thin layer of mist trapped in that darkness, and in their struggling glow I made out six distinct iron-barred cells.