Anne Kelleher - Silver's Bane

But the domesticated trees within the Grove of the Palace of the Faerie Queen, as well as the wild ones of the Forest, had been adamant. Only the Hag—She who dwelled in the dark places below the surface world—could tell Vinaver why her sister, Alemandine, had failed to become pregnant with the heir of Faerie in her appointed time.

Now Vinaver followed the creature that slithered before her, a near-formless thing that gleamed wetly as it led her through granite canyons, leaving a trail of its own slime, its face perpetually turned away from the yellow glow of her lych-light.

Just beyond a jagged outcropping, her guide paused and drew back, indicating a tunnel leading off to one side. Vinaver stopped. The thing wanted her to follow it. She crept cautiously forward, feeling her way down the rough walls with fingertips made exquisitely sensitive. She peered inside the black slit of the opening. Patches of lichen glowed as she extended the staff as far into the tunnel as she could, and frowned as she saw that the roof sloped away into a low opening that disappeared into deep and utter blackness. It appeared barely wide enough for her shoulders. She’d have to slither through it, wriggling like a worm. Her breath caught in her throat at the thought of the massive rock surrounding her on all sides, and she nearly turned, shrieking, maddened beyond reach, dashing back like a butterfly trapped in a net, frantic for the taste of sun and air. I cannot do this, the voice of her own panic screamed through her mind, as she gripped the hazel staff with wet, white-knuckled fingers. But you must do this, she thought immediately in response. And she forced herself to breathe.

The world above was sick. The trees whispered it in their branches, sighed it in the wind. What beauty Faerie possessed was illusory, fleeting, and fading even as she lingered. If she failed to find out what could be done to heal the land, everything and everyone in Faerie would be lost forever, dispersed into some chaotic void, forgotten and forsaken. Her son’s image rose up unbidden, and her heart contracted that such grace and beauty as was his should be wasted. Finuviel. She saw his coal-black curls and long green eyes, high cheekbones and slanting brows and a smile that contained within it everything right and good and beautiful of Faerie. For him, she thought. For Finuviel, I will do what I must. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the air rushing in and out of her lungs, summoning up the strength to let herself be led into that dark and narrow passage. Finally she was able to nod.

Her guide had withdrawn, crouching in a formless lump. It had no eyes but she knew it watched her. So she nodded again and waved the lych-light. The creature shuddered away from the light, but gathered itself up into a sort of ball and slithered forward.

Disgust roiled through her but she tamped that down too. With a final breath, she entered the narrow tunnel. Almost immediately she was forced to bend, then to hunch, and finally, just as she feared, she was forced to crawl, first on all fours, and then, creeping and squirming like the thing before her. She found that she was grateful for the fluids the creature exuded, for they slicked the walls, easing her passage, even as she battled the panic that threatened to undo her completely when she felt the rock walls close in around her head.

She tumbled out at last, wet with sweat and slime, and she raised her face to the rush of cold still air and looked up into a vaulted cavern covered in tiny pinpricks that resembled infant stars. It was the lichen, she realized.

The thing quivered. The stone beneath her bare feet was smooth and very cold and white mist rose from the surface of a vast, still lake. Within it, patches of luminous phosphorescence lit the whole chamber with a pale greenish glow. An underground sea, she thought. But the thing at her feet was moving again, squirming down the sloping lip to the very edge of the water. It roiled and shuddered and a single arm formed out of the shapeless mass, and a rough approximation of a hand pointed a stubby finger. Vinaver squinted. In the middle of the water, behind the shifting mist, she saw a cluster of boulders that rose from the center of a small island some distance from the shore. “Is that where She lives?”

The words hung flat as if the water somehow absorbed the sound. A heavy stillness permeated the moist cold air, a silence so profound, she could feel the skin stretching over her sinews, the air moving in and out of her lungs, the pulse of her blood against the walls of her veins. Her tongue felt sharp as crystal against the dry leather of her mouth. That this could be the end of all her wanderings made her knees weak and her heart pound like a hammer against her breastbone.

But the wide water lay between her and the Hag, and there was no other way across as far as she could see. She would have to swim. Her breath hung like the mist over the sea. The thought of immersing herself in that cold bath made her bones ache. It had been so long since she’d been truly warm, she thought. She touched her face with one cold hand. She could scarcely remember a time when her muscles were not knotted and stiff, when her bones did not feel like flesh-covered lead. She did not want to bathe in that greenish glowing water. The great rocks themselves seemed to shift and groan and sigh all around her and the stone beneath her feet undulated as if a great beast stirred from some black unbroken sleep.

Vinaver looked down at the thing crouching at her feet, throbbing in time to a silent pulse, and she understood that it had brought her as far as it could. The rest was up to her. She removed her cloak and her gown—what was left of them—and placed them neatly on the stony shore beside her leather pack and the hazel rod. The lych-light faded to a faint twinkle. The gooseflesh prickled her skin and she crossed her arms over her breasts, then walked barefoot, naked but for the ragged chemise she wore, directly down to the water.

The first few strokes were a pleasant surprise. For far from being cold, the water was warm, welcoming as a hot salt sea under a summer sun. She stretched and relaxed into it, her strokes purposeful and sure, steady as the warmth that seeped into her legs and down her toes, caressing her with a deliberateness that was almost aware. Around her the white mist rose—not mist, she thought, but steam—drifting off the surface. She could see the island rising black and barren in the center. She swam on, the warmth bolstering her and sustaining her, trailing through the long locks of her coppery hair like a lover’s fingers.

It was when the water began to thicken around her that she began to worry, that she realized that what she swam through was not water such as that which coursed through the rivers of Faerie, nor even the salt ocean that surrounded it on all sides, but some strange primal sea, and her heart clenched as she saw long, shadowy strands and huge clumps of glutinous fiber swirl through the depths, like shadowy leviathans roaming the deep. If one of those things takes me, I shall be lost, she thought, and she stroked harder, kicked faster, even as the water gathered around her, congealing into rubbery strands. Dismayed, she kicked harder as the stuff twined around her limbs, sapping her strength. But still she had hope, that here, at last she had come to where the Hag dwelled, and she whipped her hair out of her eyes, stroking desperately toward the savage-looking boulders rising tantalizingly, mercilessly, just out of reach.

At last, when finally she thought she could stand no more, her feet touched solid stone. Nearly weeping, she looked down at the thick gelatinous clots that swirled and clumped around her ankles and her calves. She wiped and kicked them away, shuddering with disgust at the way the stuff persistently slimed around her as she plowed up the steep slope. Her teeth began to chatter audibly even before her knees broke the surface of the sea and she clutched her arms close about herself, shivering in the cold, cold air, even as she scraped the thick slime off her chemise and her skin, raking it out of her hair. At last she stood on the shore. She turned and looked back. In the dim greenish light, she could barely make out the white spot of her clothes, the round, black shape of her guide crouching patiently beside it. The water pushed up against the shore, as if searching for her, and she stepped farther away from it, warily peering in the dim light for some sign of the Hag.