The Petrified Flesh Read online

  “You have to stay here for another reason.” Jacob! But he couldn’t lie to her anymore.

  “What reason?”

  “If I really find Will, he’ll need you much more than me.”

  Fool.

  “Why?”

  “You’ll have to wake him.”

  “Wake him?”

  It took her a few moments to understand.

  She looked at her finger as if the thorn had pierced her skin. “The rose!” she murmured.

  And the Prince bent over her and woke her with a kiss…

  Above them, the crescents of the two moons looked like they had been starved by the night.

  “What makes you think my kiss can wake him?” She tried so hard to hide the pain in her voice. “It’s about true love, isn’t it? But your brother doesn’t love me anymore!”

  Jacob took off the coat that made him look like a rich merchant. The only humans in the Fortress were slaves. They definitely didn’t wear fur-lined collars and that’s what he would have to pretend he was: a slave, caught by the Goyl troops, dragged underground.

  “But you still love him,” he said, “don’t you? We can only hope that’s enough.”

  Clara just stood there. She probably was back in the silent courtyard, with all the dead bodies sleeping under the wilted leaves. Distract her, Jacob.

  “How long did it take Will to ask you out?” he asked, slipping back into his old coat.

  “Two weeks.” For a moment the memory wiped the despair off her face. “I thought he would never ask. Although we ran into each other every time he visited your mother.”

  “Two weeks? That was quick for Will!” Something rustled in the bushes. Jacob reached for his pistol, but it was just a badger making its way through the shrubs. “Where did he take you?”

  “To the hospital cafeteria. Not the most romantic of places.” Clara smiled, far away, in another world. “He told me about this stray dog he’d found. He brought it to our next date.”

  For a moment Jacob caught himself envying his brother. He was not sure anyone had ever smiled like that thinking of him.

  “We should water the horses,” he said. “You want to come?”

  They soon found a small pond. The horses greedily lapped at the clear water, and Valiant’s donkey waded in to its knees. When Clara knelt down to drink, however, Jacob pulled her back.

  “In this world you should never walk into a pond like that. Do you see the cart?” The wheels had sunk into the muddy bank, and a heron had built its nest on it. “It probably belonged to a farm girl. Watermen love to catch themselves human brides.”

  Jacob thought he could hear the Waterman sigh when Clara hastily backed away from the pond. They were dangerous creatures, but in contrast to the Lorelei they didn’t eat their victims. Watermen dragged the girls they caught into their caves, where they fed them and brought them presents. Shells, pearls, jewelry from people who had drowned… Jacob had worked for the desperate parents of such abductees for a while. He’d brought three girls back to the surface—poor deranged creatures who’d never quite returned from the dark caves where surrounded by fish bones and pearls, they’d had to endure the kisses of an infatuated Waterman. In one case, the parents had refused to pay him because they no longer recognized their daughter.

  Jacob left the horses to drink and went to search for the brook that fed the pond. He soon found it, a thin trickle that emerged from a crack in the nearby rocks. Jacob fished the wilted leaves off the surface, and Clara filled her cupped hand with the icy water. It tasted earthy and fresh. Jacob only noticed the birds after he had drunken from it as well: two dead larks pressed against each other among the wet pebbles.

  He spat out the water and hastily pulled Clara to her feet.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, alarmed.

  She was more beautiful than the Fairies. More beautiful than any woman he had ever seen. Don’t, Jacob. But it was too late. Clara didn’t flinch as he pulled her close. He caressed her hair and felt her heart beating as fast as his own. She kissed his mouth, his eyes and whispered his name. A lark’s tiny heart burst from the madness. Hence the name: Larks’ Water. Innocent, cool, and clear, but just one sip and you were lost. Let her go, Jacob. But he kept on kissing her, unbuttoning her dress while she pushed her hands under his shirt.

  “Jacob!”

  Woman or vixen. For one moment Jacob thought he saw Fox in both shapes at the same time. But it was the vixen who bit him so hard that he let go of Clara. They both stumbled back, their shame mirrored on the face of the other. Clara brushed her sleeve over her lips as though she could wipe away his kisses.

  “Will you look at that!” Valiant pointed the flashlight at them and gave Jacob a lecherous smile. “Does this mean we can forget about saving your brother?”

  Jacob didn’t answer. He only had eyes for Fox. She looked at him as if he’d kicked her. She wore her human skin, but she shifted shape as soon as he made a step in her direction. And she was all fox when she approached the brook and eyed the dead larks.

  “Since when are you dumb enough to drink Larks’ Water?” She bared her teeth.

  “Dammit, Fox, it was dark!” His heart was still beating wildly.

  “Larks’ Water?” Clara’s hands were shaking as she straightened her dress. She did not look at Jacob.

  “Yes. Awful.” Valiant gave her a theatrical smile of sympathy. “Once you’ve drunk from it, you go for the next living thing. One sip of Larks’ Water and even the oldest hag looks like a Fairy. At least that’s what I hear. It doesn’t really work on Dwarfs. Bad luck it was he, not I, you shared the drink with.”

  “How long does it last?” Clara’s voice was barely audible.

  “Some say it wears off after one attack. But there are those who believe it lasts for months.” Valiant gave them both a salacious smile.

  “You seem to know a lot about Larks’ Water,” Jacob snapped. “I am sure you bottle the stuff and sell it.”

  Valiant shrugged regretfully. “It doesn’t keep. And the effect is too unpredictable. Shame. Can you imagine what a fantastic business that would be?”

  Jacob felt Clara’s eyes on him, but she turned her head away when he looked at her. He still felt her skin under his fingers. But there are those who believe it lasts for months. No. He felt only shame. And anger at himself for being so careless. He could only hope Will would never hear about it. It was bad enough that he had tricked him with the rose. Magic. There were times when he wished it would disappear from this world as well. No, you don’t, Jacob.

  “Did you find the entrance?” he asked.

  “Yes.” The vixen eyed him as if he was a stranger. “It reeks of death, if you want to know.”

  “Nonsense.” Valiant waved his hand dismissively. “It’s a natural tunnel that leads to one of their underground roads. Completely safe.”

  “Sure…” Jacob could feel the scars on his back. “Remind me how you know about it?”

  Valiant rolled his eyes, despairing of such distrust. “Every Dwarf who trades in precious stones knows about it, but it’s a well-guarded secret. Not even the Goyl we trade with know how we get the stones out of the Fortress. We have to do it secretly because Kami’en has banned the export of quite a few popular gems. The Goyl traders are as upset about it as we are.”

  “I’m telling you the tunnel smells of death,” Fox repeated.

  “You’re welcome to try the main entrance!” Valiant sneered. “Maybe Jacob Reckless will be the first human to stroll into the Goyl’s Royal Fortress without ending up in amber.”

  Jacob avoided looking at Clara when he walked over to his horse. Larks’ Water. Fox was right. Any fool in this world would have been more careful. But it wasn’t his world. He had come back from death and he was losing hope that he still had a chance of finding his brother. It was surely not the right time to steal into the Goyl’s main fortress. But he had to find Will. He had found him before—in the other world. There he had disappeared when he
left him outside a tobacco shop. Jacob had run for hours through the streets, breathless with fear and guilt, until he had found him, crouching on a doorstep, shaking with fear, his eyes red with tears. He had carried him all the way back to the apartment, so as not to lose him again.

  He reloaded his pistol and fetched a few things from his saddlebags: the snuffbox, the small green bottle he had refilled just a few months ago, and Chanute’s knife. Then he filled his pockets with ammunition and went in search of Fox. It took a while before he spotted her under the trees, as the wilted leaves covering the ground around her almost made her invisible.

  “Keep a lookout for Goyl patrols,” he said. “Valiant says they make their rounds every three hours. If I’m not back by tomorrow evening, don’t wait for me.”

  She didn’t look at him.

  “It’s madness to go into that Fortress,” she said, brushing a spider off her fur. “And you’re a fool to trust the Dwarf again. You can’t think straight when it comes to your brother. Or maybe it’s just your stupid pride.”

  She walked away as quietly as if a vixen’s body weighed less than the wilted leaves she stepped on. And Jacob wished she had once again bitten him before they parted. The vixen’s bites always spoke of love. Why was she so angry with him? Because he had been careless enough to drink Larks’ Water? No. Because he was again leaving her behind after they had been to so many dangerous places together? Or was she just tired of chasing after his brother and watching over Clara?

  Jacob was going to follow her when Valiant moved into his path.

  “What are we waiting for? I thought you were in a hurry.”

  Yes, they were.

  Clara was still standing by the brook. She turned away as Jacob walked toward her.

  “Look at me.”

  She obeyed. But she blushed when their eyes met and Jacob felt his own blood rush to his face. Anger, shame… he had to forget about it, or he would be dead a few steps into that tunnel.

  “It meant nothing, Clara,” he said. “Nothing, do you hear me? You love Will. If you forget that, we can’t help him. Nobody can. Neither in this nor in the other world. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, but her eyes were dark with shame. What could he say to make her trust herself again? And him. Try the truth, Jacob.

  “You wanted to know what I’m planning to do.”

  How to say it without making it sound as hopeless as it was?

  “I need to find the Dark Fairy. There is a way to force her to give Will his skin back. Her sister told me how. But I need to get close to her.”

  He put his finger warningly on Clara’s lips when he saw her eyes widen with fear. “Please! Fox can’t know about this. She’ll just try to follow me! But I swear to you, I will find the Fairy, and Will. Your kiss will wake him, and all will end well.”

  All will end well and they’ll live happily ever after…

  Jacob looked again for Fox before he followed the Dwarf into the night. But he couldn’t find her.

  35

  UNDERGROUND

  Fox hadn’t exaggerated: the tunnel the Dwarfs used for their illegal trades with the Goyl did indeed smell of death. Death, decay, despair. For the cave that was the entrance to the tunnel was an Ogre’s cave.

  There were many Ogre species behind the mirror, and contrary to popular belief, they hunted Dwarfs and Goyl as well as humans. The ground of the cave was covered with bones, as all Ogres loved to surround themselves with their leftovers. Some even built music instruments or sculptures from their victims’ remains; others recited poetry while they cooked them. This Ogre, though, seemed to just leave things where they fell after hunt and meal. Jacob spotted a pocket watch, while his boots were crunching finger and leg bones. He saw the torn sleeve of a woman’s dress, a child’s shoe, heart-wrenchingly small, and a notebook, the writing rendered illegible by dried blood. He had been to Ogre caves before and he still felt a terror in them that no enchanted castle or Waterman’s den could arouse. His first instinct was to return and warn Clara and Fox—until he remembered that the vixen had seen the cave.

  “Did you ever meet this Ogre?” he asked Valiant, while they made their way through the bones.

  “No, the Goyl killed him and his wife years ago.” Valiant kicked a withered belt out of the way. “Luckily they didn’t find the tunnel, when they raided the cave.”

  The crack through which he disappeared was wide enough for a Dwarf, but Jacob could barely squeeze by. The tunnel itself was so low that he had to get down on his knees at times (a sight Valiant enjoyed vastly) with a descent so treacherously steep that Jacob was grateful for every dip and corner. He soon found it hard to breathe and was very relieved when the tunnel finally opened onto one of the roads the Goyl built underground to connect their fortresses and aboveground conquests. The road was wide enough to allow coaches and carts to pass and was paved with fluorescent stones, which glowed when Valiant shone the flashlight on them. Jacob thought he could hear machines in the distance and a constant hum, like the sound of wasps swarming above windfalls.

  “What is that noise?” he asked the Dwarf in a low voice.

  “Insects. They clean the Goyl’s sewage. Their cities smell much better than ours. Bend down!” Valiant pulled a pen from his pocket. “It’s time for your slave mark. ‘P’ for Prussan, remember that name!” He pressed the pen firmly on Jacob’s skin, as if he wanted to carve the Goyl letter permanently into his forehead. “Prussan’s a merchant I do business with, and now he is your owner. Come to think of it, his slaves are much cleaner than you, and they definitely don’t wear weapons belts, so you’d better give that to me.”

  “No thanks,” Jacob whispered, straightening up and buttoning his coat over the belt. “I certainly don’t want to rely on your help if the Goyl stop us.”

  Valiant commented on such mistrust by shrugging and waving him on.

  The road they followed soon led them into a tunnel as wide as the grand boulevards of Vena, Lutis, or Londra. This underground avenue, however, was not lined with trees. When Valiant pointed the flashlight at the walls of solid rock that rose at least twenty feet high on both sides to the vaulted crystal ceiling, Jacob saw faces emerging from the darkness. He had always believed it was a myth that the Goyl honored their heroes by lining the roads of their fortresses with their heads. But as so often in this world the stories told the truth. The heads of thousands of fallen Goyl warriors were staring down at them, set side by side like flagstones, with their stone-skinned faces unchanged by death. Only the eyes had been replaced with golden topaz.

  Valiant didn’t stay on the Avenue of the Dead for long. He mostly went via tunnels as narrow as mountain roads, all of them leading deeper and deeper underground. More and more often Jacob saw dim lights at the end of a passage or felt the activity of machinery like a subtle vibration on his skin. A few times they heard the sound of hooves or wheels approaching, but every tunnel was flanked by countless caves where one could hide in thickets of stalagmites or behind curtains of dripstone.

  The sound of dripping water was everywhere, constant and inescapable, and the flashlight revealed the miracles it had formed over thousands of years: chalk-white cascades of petrified froth, forests of sandstone needles hanging above them from the ceilings, and crystal flowers blossoming in the dark. For the Goyl all this was visible without any light. Their eyes were meant for the darkness, and Jacob wondered whether Will had seen all this or whether he had already been sleeping when Hentzau had taken him to the Fairy, wrapped in Miranda’s spell.

  In many caves, the Goyl had barely left a trace except for a straight path leading through the thickets of stone, or a few perfectly square tunnel openings. Other caves were lined with stone façades and mosaics that seemed to originate from earlier times, ruins among the columns the water had grown from the rock. The Goyl claimed to have been settled underground for far longer than humans had built their settlements on the surface.

  It felt as if they had been wandering for days th
rough the labyrinth when one led them into a vast cave that rose like a cathedral’s nave around a lake, its dark waters shimmering with the light of thousands of phosphorescent dragonflies swarming above the surface. The cave walls were covered with blackish-green plants, and across the water spanned an endless bridge that was barely more than a stone arch reinforced with steel. Their footsteps echoed treacherously on its worn flagstones and stirred up clouds of bats, and the vast emptiness around them felt so threatening that Jacob caught himself looking over his shoulder more than once. They had crossed the bridge halfway when Valiant came to an abrupt halt and stared at something blocking his path. It was a corpse, not Goyl but human. The dead man wore the sign of his owner tattooed on his forehead, and his throat and chest were covered in gaping wounds.

  Valiant cast a hasty glance at the cave ceiling.

  “What killed him?” Jacob drew his pistol.

  The Dwarf let the beam of the flashlight wander over the stalactites above. “The Guardians,” he whispered. “The Goyl breed them as watchdogs to defend the outer tunnels and roads. They only come out when they scent something that isn’t Goyl. But I never had any trouble with them on this route before. Wait!”

  Valiant muttered a curse when the flashlight found a row of worryingly large holes between the stalactites.

  A chirping sound cut through the silence, and the Dwarf leaped over the body and ran as fast as the narrow bridge allowed.

  Above them the cave filled with the flutter of leathery wings. The Goyl’s Guardians dove out from the stalactites like birds of prey, their faces pale and almost human, their bat-like wings ending in sharp talons. The huge eyes were so milky that Jacob suspected they were blind, but clearly their ears guided them quite reliably. He shot two in mid-flight as he ran after the Dwarf, but three more were already crawling out of their holes. One tried to swipe the pistol from his hand, but he managed to slam his elbow into the pale face and hack off one of its wings with his saber. The creature screamed so loudly that he was sure it would alert dozens more of its brethren, but fortunately not all of the holes seemed to be inhabited.