Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(78)

She wasn't conventionally beautiful - her face was too inhuman for that, with eyes that were too big and a nose too small for humanity. Her scars weren't as bad as they'd appeared when I'd seen them before. They looked older and less angry . . . but there were a lot of them.

"We are ready," Samuel said, looking at Ariana with a hunger that had nothing to do with his stomach.

Zee reached behind his head and drew his dagger, dark-bladed and elegant in its deadly simplicity, from beneath the collar of his shirt. Either it was magic or a sheath, I couldn't tell, and with Zee it could be either one. He used it to make a single clean cut on his forearm. For a moment, nothing happened, and then blood, dark and red, welled up. He knelt and let the blood drip into the dirt.

"Mother," he said. "Hear me, your child."

He put the hand of his uninjured arm into the soil and mixed his blood into the powdery earth. In German he whispered, "Erde, geliebte Mutter, dein Kind ruft. Schmecke mein Blut. Erkenne deine Schopfung, gewahre Einlass."

Magic made my feet tingle and my nose itch - but nothing else happened. Zee stood up and counted off four paces before he sliced his other forearm.

Kneeling, he bowed his head, and this time there was power in his voice. "Erde mein, lass mich ein."

Blood slid over his skin and down onto the backs of his hands, which were flat on the ground. "Gibst mir Mut!" he shouted - and rolled his hands over, wiping the blood on the ground.

"Trinkst mein Blut. Erkenne mich." He leaned forward and put his weight on his arms. First his hands, then his arms sank into the ground until they were buried past the wounds he'd given himself. He leaned down until his mouth was nearly in the dirt, and said quietly, "offne Dich."

The ground under my feet vibrated, and a crack appeared between the place Zee sat and the place where he'd mixed his blood with the soil.

"Erde mein," he said. The ground quivered with the vibrations of his voice, which sounded darker, as if he were dragging it out of a deep cavern. "Lass mich ein. Gibst mir Glut." He put his forehead on the ground. "Trinke mein Blut. Es quillt fur Dich hervor. offne mir ein Tor!"

There was a flash, and a large square of dirt just disappeared, leaving in its place a stone staircase that went straight down for eight steps, then began to turn upon its inner edge. I couldn't see any farther because a thick fog rose from the depths of the hole and obscured the stairway about ten feet down.

Zee jerked his hands out of the ground. There was dirt on his arms, but no wounds and no blood. He raised one hand and held it out to Ariana, giving her a stone that glowed.

"I can hold it for about an hour," Zee told us. "Ariana can use the stone to find the way back to me. If you see the light begin to flicker, it means I am at the end of my strength, and you need to get back here. So long as this door is open, the time in the Elphame will sync with the time outside. If this door closes, you might get out, but I don't know when you'll find yourselves if you do."
* * *

SAMUEL LED THE WAY DOWN, FOLLOWED BY ARIANA. I sent Jesse ahead of me and took up the rear. The light above us grew quickly dimmer until we were traveling in virtual darkness. Jesse stumbled, and I caught her before she could fall.

"Here," said Ariana. "Put your hand on my shoulder, Jesse."

"I'll put mine on yours," I told Jesse. "Samuel, can you see anything?"

"I can now," he said. "It's getting lighter ahead."

"Lighter" was a relative term, but the ten stairs we went down I could see. The stairs ended in a dirt tunnel that was lit by gems embedded in the ground that were as big around as oranges. The ceiling of the tunnel was about six inches lower than Samuel was tall, and the roof and sides were thick with tree roots.

"There aren't any trees above us," I said. "And even if there were, we've come down a long way past where I'd have thought there would be roots."

"She has a forest lord in her court," said Ariana, reaching to the side where strings of roots made a rough curtain for the dirt wall beyond. The roots moved toward her, caressing her fingers briefly before falling back where they had been.

"What kind of fae are you, Ariana?" asked Jesse. "Are you a forest lord, too? Or a gremlin like Zee, because you can work silver?"

"There are no others like Zee," she told us. "He is unique. Almost all fae can work with silver to one extent or another - silver loves fae magic. But you are right: there are iron-kissed fae in my background, and steel holds no terrors for me."

We were talking quietly, but I wasn't too worried about being discovered. There was a feeling of . . . emptiness here that told me that there was no life other than the roots that tangled in my hair and tripped my feet.

"We - " I stopped, remembering that I wasn't supposed to discuss anything about the fairy queen. Had I already broken my word? Did it matter when we were storming the castle?

"Jesse," I said, deciding to play it safe, "we haven't planned anything at all about the rescue."

"There's no planning when you're running through Elphame," said Samuel, who was walking bent over, with one hand up to ward off the roots. "It's not that kind of place. Ariana will lead us to her grandson and Gabriel, and we'll try to get out by coping with anything that happens along the way."