The Petrified Flesh Page 13

  While Fox disappeared between some houses to catch one of the pigeons pecking at the cobblestones, Jacob walked with Valiant and Clara toward the ferry landing. On the opposite shore a wide stone gate in the mountainside was visible.

  “Is that the entrance to the Fortress?” Jacob asked the Dwarf.

  Valiant shook his head. “No. No. That’s just one of the cave cities they built aboveground. The Royal Fortress is farther inland, so deep underground that you’ll wish you could unlearn breathing.”

  The ferry that was anchored at the dock had clearly seen countless rough crossings. The metal plates covering its wooden hull had more dents than a battleship. The ferryman was already closing the landing with a rusty chain, and when Jacob asked whether he could take them across before nightfall, his lips bent into a scornful grin. He looked nearly as hideous as Fron’s infamous Wart Trolls, who were easily scared by their own reflections.

  “This river isn’t a very hospitable place after dark.” He spoke loudly as if he wanted to be heard on the other shore. “And tomorrow no one is allowed to cross the river because the crowned Goyl will emerge from his den to go to his wedding.”

  “Wedding?” Jacob looked at Valiant questioningly, but the Dwarf just shrugged his shoulder.

  “Where have you been?” the ferryman sneered. “The Empress of Austry buys peace from the Stone Faces by marrying her daughter to their King. Tomorrow they’ll swarm out of their holes, and the Goyl will ride to Vena on his Devil-train to take the loveliest Princess ever born down to his burrow. Curse him. Curse them all.”

  Jacob felt for once relieved that Will was not with him.

  “Does the Dark Fairy accompany Kami’en to the wedding?”

  Valiant cast a curious glance at Jacob. It wouldn’t take the Dwarf long to figure out that Jacob was not just looking for his brother, but the longer he could keep that secret the better. Jacob was worried that not even a cutting from a gold tree would keep Valiant by his side once he learned that he planned to confront the Dark Fairy.

  “Sure she does,” the ferryman grunted. “Kami’en goes nowhere without the Fairy Witch. Not even when he marries another woman.”

  Jacob stared across the river. Tomorrow. Bad luck, once again. He would have even less time than expected to get to the Fairy. He put his hand in his pocket.

  “Did you by any chance take a Goyl officer across today?”

  “What?” The ferryman held a hand behind his ear.

  “A Goyl officer. Jasper skin? Nearly blind in one eye. He had a female soldier with him. And a prisoner.”

  The ferryman’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “Why? Are you one of those who’re still hunting them?” He was once again speaking so loudly that Jacob cast a worried glance at the Goyl sentries, guarding the manhole entrance farther up the shore. But luckily they had their backs turned to them.

  “That prisoner he had with him would fetch you a fine price,” the ferryman gave Jacob a conspiratorial wink. “His skin was jade! Their sacred stone. I’ve never seen one with that color.”

  Jacob had to resist the temptation to punch his ugly face. That’s what his brother had become—a prey to be hunted for his skin. He rubbed the handkerchief until he felt metal between his fingers.

  “This is for you,” he said, dropping one of the coins into the ferryman’s callused hand. “You’ll get another on the other side—if you take us across tonight.”

  The man eyed the coin greedily, but Valiant grabbed Jacob’s arm and pulled him aside.

  “Let’s wait until tomorrow,” he hissed. “It’s getting dark, and this river is swarming with Lorelei.”

  Lorelei. Jacob’s grandfather had sometimes sung them a song about those river Nymphs. The words had made him shudder as a child; this side of the mirror the stories told about them were even more sinister. But tomorrow the Fairy would be gone and he would have to find her at a Royal wedding.

  “No worries!” The ferryman gave him a confident smile, while he closed his fingers firmly around the golden coin. “I’ll make sure we won’t wake them.”

  He reached into his baggy pockets and handed Jacob and Valiant each a pair of wax earplugs, which for sure had been used in countless ears.

  “Just to be on the safe side,” he said. “You never know. She doesn’t need one,” he added with a nod in Clara’s direction. “The Lorelei are only after men.”

  Jacob was just wondering whether Fox would be back in time, when the vixen came down the landing pier. She licked a few feathers from her fur before jumping aboard the shallow boat. The horses were nervous when they led them onto the ferry, and Jacob could barely calm them. The ferryman untied the ropes and the boat drifted out on the river. Behind them the houses of Blenheim dissolved into the twilight, and the only sound was the lapping of the water against the metal-clad hull. Jacob could make out a dirt road on the other shore, leading farther inland. The ferryman gave him another comforting wink, but the horses were still restless, and the vixen was standing behind the rails with pricked ears.

  A voice wafted across the water.

  At first it sounded like a bird singing, but then it more and more resembled a woman’s voice. It came from a rock that protruded from the water to their left, its surface as gray as the twilight. Something slid into the water, fish-tailed, with a woman’s breasts. A second Nymph followed. And then they were everywhere.

  Valiant uttered a curse. “What did I tell you?” he hissed at Jacob. “Faster!” he shouted at the ferryman. “Come on!”

  But the man seemed to hear neither the Dwarf nor the voices that drifted ever more enticingly across the water. It was only when Jacob put a hand on his shoulder that he spun around.

  “He can’t hear!” Valiant screamed, hastily stuffing the wax into his ears. “That cunning dog is as deaf as a dead fish!”

  The ferryman just shrugged and clutched his oar more tightly. Jacob wondered how often he had come back without his passengers, as he pushed the grimy earplugs into his ears.

  The horses shied. They could barely control them. The last daylight was fading, and the far shore inched toward them painfully slowly, as if the water was dragging them back. Clara moved closer to Jacob’s side, and Fox posted herself protectively in front of them, determined to protect him from what was stirring in the coming night. The voices grew so loud that Jacob could hear them through the earplugs. They were luring him toward the water. Clara pulled him back from the rails, but the singing seeped through his skin like sweet venom. Heads emerged from the waves, hair drifting on the water like reeds, and when Clara let go of him for one second to press her hands over her own aching ears, Jacob felt his fingers reach for the protective waxes and threw them overboard.

  The singing cut through his brain like honey-coated knives. Clara tried again to hold him back as he staggered toward the edge of the ferry, but Jacob shoved her away so hard that she stumbled against the ferryman.

  Where were they? He leaned over the water. At first he saw only his own reflection, but then it melted into a face. It looked like a woman’s, but it was noseless, had huge silvery eyes and fangs pushing over the pale green lips. Arms reached out of the river and fingers closed around Jacob’s wrist. Another hand grabbed his hair. Water lapped into the ferry. There were so many of them, reaching out for him, their scaly bodies pulled halfway out of the water, their teeth bared. Lorelei. Much worse than the song his grandfather had hummed so often. Most of the time reality was much worse.

  The vixen dug her teeth into the scaly arms that had grabbed Jacob, but another Lorelei was already pulling him over the rails. He was losing his footing, although he fought them with all his strength, but just when he felt himself sliding into the water, he heard a shot and the Nymph sank back, a gaping hole in her forehead. Clara was kneeling behind him and holding his pistol in her trembling hands. Fox shot another two who were trying to pull Valiant into the river. The ferryman forgot to hold onto his oar when she shape-shifted, and Fox had to shoot anot
her three Lorelei to prevent them from pulling him over the rails. They tried to grab her too, for obviously they showed no mercy to women when they shot at them. But the fighting had brought Jacob back to his senses, and he killed the two who were trying to pull Fox into the water. As the bodies drifted away from the ferry, the other Lorelei backed off and set about devouring their dead sisters.

  The sight made Clara drop the pistol and throw up over the rails, while Fox and Valiant caught the panicked horses and Jacob helped the ferryman steer the wildly pitching boat toward the pier. The Lorelei screamed after them, but now their voices merely sounded like a swarm of shrieking gulls.

  They were still howling as Jacob led the horses ashore. When the ferryman stepped in front of him and held out his hand, Fox nearly shoved him into the river.

  “Oh, so you did hear the bit about the second coin?” she hissed at him. “Do you usually earn your living by delivering dinner to the Lorelei?”

  The ferryman stared at her with the usual mix of fear, fascination, and disgust all shape-shifters encounter when they reveal their secret.

  “I earned it!” he retorted. “You’re on the other shore, aren’t you? The Dark Fairy put them in the river. Everyone says so. Am I supposed to let her ruin my business?”

  “Your business!” Valiant’s face was still unusually pale. “I suggest you give back the other coin too, you lying sack of horse manure!”

  “No, let him keep it. Maybe there is more he didn’t tell us about,” Jacob said, pulling the second gold coin from his pocket. “Any other Man Eaters we should be on the lookout for?”

  The ferryman hastily grabbed the coin and stuffed it into a grimy pocket.

  “Oh, yes. There are those Dragons! They come from the Fortress, as red as the flames they spit setting the mountains on fire, and the trees, and the grass. Sometimes it burns for days and my boat is covered in ashes.”

  “Dragons? Sure.” Valiant gave Jacob a knowing look. “Don’t you also tell your children that there are Giants on this side of the river?” He lowered his voice, signaling the ferryman to lean down to him. “Shall I tell you where to find Dragons?”

  “Where?” The ferryman frowned with the effort to understand the Dwarf.

  “Saw them with my own eyes!” Valiant shouted into his deaf ear. “Sitting on their nest of bones, just two miles upriver from here. But they were green, and one had a leg as scrawny as yours dangling from its ugly mouth. ‘By the Devil and all his golden hairs,’ I said to myself, ‘I wouldn’t like to be in Blenheim the day those beasts decide to fly downstream.’”

  The ferryman’s eyes grew bigger than Jacob’s gold coins. “Two miles?”

  He cast a worried glance up the river.

  “Maybe even a little less,” Valiant shouted, dropping the grimy earplugs into his hands. “Good luck on your way home!”

  The ferryman kept staring up the river while he walked back to his boat, as if he was searching the night sky for the silhouettes of two Dragons.

  “Not a bad story!” Jacob complimented Valiant who was swinging himself onto his donkey. “But what would you say if I told you that I met a man in Parsia who claimed he saw a living Dragon just a few years ago in a valley in Zhonghua?”

  “I’d say that either you are a liar,” Valiant replied, “or that he was.”

  Behind them the Lorelei were still screaming, and Clara looked once again at the river before she mounted her horse. Fox turned into the vixen again and raised her muzzle into the wind.

  “What do you smell?” Jacob asked.

  “Goyl,” she replied, “nothing but Goyl. As if both soil and air were made of them.”

  33

  SO TIRED

  Will wanted to sleep. Just sleep and forget the blood, all that blood on Jacob’s chest. His dead brother. That was the only image that found its way into his dreams. And the sound of a woman’s voice. She sounded like water, dark, deep water.

  But Will had to sleep. Sleep. And forget all the blood pouring out of his brother’s chest.

  “Why don’t you wake up? Are you afraid of me?”

  A hand caressed his face. Six fingers, soft and cool.

  “I don’t think so. That’s your red sister’s doing.”

  The voice of the murderer.

  Will longed to kill him. He wanted to beat him to death with his bare hands… just to see him lying there as motionless as Jacob. But sleep held him prisoner, paralyzing his limbs and his mind.

  “My sister? When did he meet my sister? Why didn’t you stop him?”

  “We tried but they had a Dwarf with them who got them past the unicorns. You didn’t tell me how to manage that. I lost most of my men in that accursed valley!”

  His brother’s murderer. And he couldn’t move. Will felt as if he was drifting in black water, sinking deeper with every breath he took.

  “You are more powerful than all your sisters. Just reverse whatever she did to him.”

  “This is a thorn spell. Nobody can reverse it. He had a girl with him. I saw her. Where is she?”

  “I had no orders to bring her here.”

  Thorn spell. Black water… the voices slowly receded, or was he just sinking deeper?

  “Bring me the girl! Your King’s life depends on it.”

  Will once again felt the six fingers on his face. They caressed his cheeks, the lids of his eyes so firmly closed, his forehead…

  “The jade Goyl. Born from the flesh of his enemies.” Even her voice caressed his skin. “My dreams never lie.”

  34

  LARKS’ WATER

  For a while, Valiant led them quite purposefully through the night. However, as the slopes around them became more rugged and the road they’d followed from the river ended in gravel and a thicket of thorny bushes, the Dwarf brought his donkey to a halt and eyed his surroundings with a baffled look on his face.

  “What?” Jacob rode to his side. “Don’t tell me you’re lost already. Or did you just remember that you saw that secret entrance only in your dreams?”

  From the beginning it had sounded too good to be true: an entrance to their Royal Fortress that the Goyl didn’t know about… Jacob cursed himself for trusting the Dwarf again, after he had twice almost cost him his life. Almost, Jacob? Last time you did die.

  “Nonsense, I have used that entrance many times!” the Dwarf snapped. “But never at night. How am I supposed to find a hidden entrance when it’s darker than up a Giant’s butt? We’re very close, I’m sure!”

  He climbed off his donkey and looked around with a fiercely determined frown until Jacob dismounted and handed him the flashlight. The Dwarf let the beam of light swipe over trees and shrubs with an incredulous smile.

  “What’s this? Some kind of Fairy magic?”

  “Something like that,” replied Jacob.

  “That’s fantastic! Where can I get such a thing?” Valiant pointed the flashlight down the shrubby slope. “I’d bet my hat it’s down there somewhere.”

  “I’ll get you a ‘thing’ like that,” Jacob said, “if you find the entrance.”

  Fox didn’t take her eyes off the Dwarf when he stomped off down the hill.

  “You let him go all by himself?” she asked. “Don’t you think there’s a good chance he’ll come back with a Goyl patrol?”

  She followed Valiant into the night before Jacob could admit that she was, of course, right. His only excuse was that he still felt as if part of him had never left the fairies’ valley or the moss-covered bed on the island. Maybe that was Miranda’s price for giving him back his life: that she had kept half his soul… Nonsense, he told himself. He had barely slept for days, the Goyl had his brother, and he wanted his old life back. To go treasure hunting with Fox without a thought about yesterday or tomorrow, or Fairies and Goyl…

  Clara tied her horse and Valiant’s donkey to a nearby tree—not without making sure that there was no bird tree nearby. She had learned her lesson, although Jacob was sure that she still didn’t like this world. H
ow could she? The golden threads in her skirt caught the moonlight. Jacob plucked a few leaves from an oak tree and handed them to her.

  “Here. Rub these between your hands and then brush them over the embroidery.”

  The threads faded under her fingers as if she’d wiped the gold off the fabric.

  “Elven thread,” Jacob said. “Very beautiful but at night worse than a swarm of will-o’-the-wisps landing on your dress.”

  Clara brushed her hand over her conspicuously fair hair as if she hoped to dull its shine too. “I guess, you plan to have the Dwarf take only you into the Fortress?”

  “Of course. It will be difficult enough for just the two of us to stay unnoticed.” And yes, Valiant would probably desert him at the first glimpse of danger, but he would once again have to risk trusting him.

  “No, wait.” Clara grabbed his arm when he turned to check on the horses. “We have only made it so far because we helped each other. If you’d been alone on the river, you’d be dead by now! Stop thinking you have to do things without anyone’s help. You only make an exception for Fox because she doesn’t allow you to send her away. Let us come with you. Please.”

  “No.” Jacob shook his head. “The only humans allowed in the Fortress are male and prisoners of war! The Dwarf won’t arouse any suspicion because they trade with the Goyl, but a human woman and a vixen are clearly intruders, and I don’t want you both to end up cast in amber.”

  How she looked at him. He was such a fool. Why did he tell her all that? To make her realize how suicidal a mission this was? Yes, Jacob saw it in her eyes: that his words had finally made her lose any illusion about how this would probably end. Maybe he kept talking for that reason. Because she looked so desperate. And because he was a fool.