Because You Love to Hate Me(66)

When the fog cleared, Isaac shuddered. A bitter wind slashed at his face, unnerving him, before it stopped abruptly. As if the wind were the breath of the forest, and its mouth had locked closed.

They stood on fallen leaves in a silence so deep it was almost too much to bear. Their boots sank to their ankles. George hefted up the lantern he was carrying. Isaac hardly dared speak, but he forced himself.

“Did Princess Alice say where the Erl-queen hides?”

“No, but elves have an affinity with yews.” George handed Isaac the lantern. “If we strike the bark from one, we will soon hear from the sprites. They will lead us to her.”

The thought of damaging the forest chilled him—there was no greater insult to an elf—but George knew best. Being a man of varied interests, with an insatiable hunger to learn, he knew more about the Erl-queen than many scholars did.

They walked a little farther. Every footstep crackled, scraping at Isaac’s nerves, and when he stepped on a hidden twig, it let out a sound like a gunshot that echoed through the forest. Sweat trickled from his hairline. He was certain he could see green eyes among the foliage.

“I see no yews,” he murmured.

The trees, whatever sort they were, were impossibly tall; even their lowest branches were higher than Isaac could have reached, even if he had thrown a stone. At first glance, it was an ordinary forest, aside from the colossal trees, but when his vision sharpened, he found the imperfections. The trunks bled golden sap. The cracks in the bark glowed lambent red. He saw that the forest was only a mask, and the poison beneath, the poison of the Erl-queen, was oozing through the fractures. Everything was washed in a queasy greenish light, and it all seemed to curve—as if he were peering through a glass bottle, or all of it was a picture printed on a newspaper and he was pulling its edges toward him, warping it strangely. It made him giddy and breathless and frightened all at once.

He had only taken a few steps, and already he was disoriented. As if he had taken the whole bottle of brandy.

George wavered, too. His path had been straight at first, but now he veered to and fro, making the lantern sway. Watching it made Isaac feel as if he might be sick.

“She must know now,” he whispered. “She must know of our coming, George.”

She knows.

Isaac turned on his heel, drawing his sword. The voice had been so close to his ear that he had felt breath fluttering there, and it did not belong to George, but no one was behind him.

A shadow scuttled in the corner of his eye, and a titter, high and childlike, sent a cold draft down his nape. He spun to face it with a hoarse cry, just in time to see a ribbon of scarlet disappearing behind a tree.

“What is it?” George hissed. “Isaac?”

Sprites. They had come already. Their blood-red hair was famous—what Alice had followed into the woods. A lesser sort of Erl-folk, but no less dangerous. They would be carrying word of the strangers’ presence to their queen.

“I heard—” His tongue was clumsy. “A voice.”

The voice of a son, a servant, a sentinel.

This time, George also flinched. His eyes reflected the lantern.

All around them, dead leaves shifted and danced, resurrected from their grave. They reeled into a churning column; it moved the way a dancer would cross Pandemonium’s ballroom, and it flickered with the vestige of the autumnal red. Dizzied by the sight of it and frightened half to death, Isaac tightened his hold on the sword. As he watched, the column gained sharp edges and corners, firmed and whirled itself into the shape of a man: pale, barefoot, and almost naked. All that protected his modesty were frayed breeches, palest silver-green and coated with fine hair. More flaxen hair poured over his shoulders in abundance and streamed to his waist, clinging to his skin as if he had risen from water. His entire body was knotted and gnarled with muscle.

“Men,” this formidable creature observed. “Human men in the Forest of Erl.”

The pointed ears marked him as an erl, but the black eyes were the true seal of his heritage. Maggot holes into oblivion. This could only be the Erl-queen’s son.

Isaac thrust his sword forward, gripping it in a white-knuckled hand. He had seen the fanciful illustrations of elves in Punch, but he had never felt such terror as he did when he beheld their prince with his own eyes. No drawing could capture the way the creature bled the warmth from the air around them, the sense that he was more element than being, the certainty that he had no business taking the form of a man. He had been here since the world was new. All this Isaac knew from only a glance.

“We have come for Marigold Beath,” Isaac said. His hand shook. “Tell us where you took her.”

“Don’t speak to it, Isaac.” George’s pistol was aimed between those ghastly eyes. “It has no power over metal.”

“Is that so, man of flesh?” the Erl-queen’s son purred. “People will believe almost anything if they hear it in a coffeehouse. If rumor has it, then it must be true. Do you believe everything you hear about Erl-folk, Isaac Fairfax?” He took a step toward them. “Do you believe everything you hear about me?”

The eyes were on him now, penetrating his soul. Isaac swallowed the sour taste that was rising in his gorge. When he looked into those eyes, he saw a world without order. He saw the chaos of prehistory. Despite what the gossips had whispered, he could not imagine this . . . thing in the brothels of Covent Garden.