Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices 2)

The mountains weren't often visible, though. Mostly the path they followed wound through low-hanging trees that grew close together, boughs occasionally intertwining. More than once Emma would catch a glimpse of bright eyes flashing out from between the shadows. When tree branches rustled, she would look up to catch sight of shadows moving quickly above them, laughter trailing behind them like mist.

"These are the places of the wild fey," said Mark, as the road curved around a hill. "The gentry fey stay within the Courts or sometimes town. They like their creature comforts."

Here and there were signs of habitation: crumbled mossy bits of old stone walls, wooden fences cleverly fitted together without the use of nails. They passed through several villages in the hour before dawn: Every one of them was shuttered and dark, windows broken and empty. As they went farther into Faerie they began to see something else, too. The first time they saw it, Emma stopped short and exclaimed--the grass they'd been walking on had suddenly dissolved under her feet, puffing up white and gray like ash around her ankles.

She looked around in astonishment and discovered that the others were staring too. They had wandered into the edge of a ragged circle of diseased-looking land. It reminded Emma of photos she'd seen of crop circles. Everything within the perimeter of the circle was a dull, sickly whitish gray: the grass, the trees, the leaves and plants. The bones of small animals were scattered among the gray vegetation.

"What is this?" Emma demanded. "Some kind of dark faerie magic?"

Mark shook his head. "I have never seen any blight such as this before. I do not like it. Let us make haste away."

No one argued, but as they hurried through the ghost towns and across the hills, they saw several more patches of the ugly blight. At last the sky began to turn light with dawn. All of them were nearly dropping with exhaustion when they left the road behind and found themselves in a place of trees and rolling hills.

"We can rest here," Mark said. He pointed to a rise of ground opposite, whose top was hidden by a number of stone cairns. "Those will give some shelter, and some cover."

Emma frowned. "I hear water," she said. "Is there a stream?"

"You know we can't drink the water here," Julian said, as she picked her way downhill, toward the sound of fluid bubbling over rocks and around tree roots.

"I know, but we could at least wash off in it--" Her voice died. There was a stream, of sorts, bisecting the valley between the two low hills, but the water wasn't water. It was scarlet, and thick. It moved sluggishly, slow and red and dripping, between the black trunks of trees.

" 'All the blood that's shed on earth, runs through the springs of that country,' " said Mark, at her elbow. "You quoted that to me."

Julian moved to the edge of the blood stream and knelt down. With a quick gesture, he dipped his fingers in. They came out scarlet. "It clots," he said, frowning in mixed fascination and disgust, and wiped his hand off on the grass. "Is it really--human blood?"

"That's what they say," said Mark. "Not all the rivers of faerie are like this, but they claim that the blood of the murdered dead of the human world runs through the streams and creeks and springs here in the woods."

"Who is they?" Julian asked, standing up. "Who says that?"

"Kieran," said Mark simply.

"I know the story too," said Cristina. "There are different versions of the legends, but I have heard many and most say that the blood is human, mundane blood." She backed up, took a running jump, and landed on the other side of the bloody stream with some feet to spare.

The rest of them followed her, and trudged up the hill to the flat, grassy top, which commanded a view of the surrounding countryside. Emma suspected the cairns of crumbled stones had once been a watchtower of some sort.

They unrolled the blankets they had and spread out coats, huddling under them for warmth. Mark curled up and immediately fell asleep. Cristina lay down more cautiously, her body wrapped in her dark blue coat, her long hair spilling over the arm on which her head rested.

Emma found a place for herself in the grass, folding her gear jacket up to make a pillow. She had nothing to wrap herself in, and shivered when her skin touched the cold ground as she reached to balance Cortana carefully on a nearby stone.

"Emma." It was Julian, rolling over toward her. He'd been so still she'd thought he was asleep. She didn't even remember lying down this close to him. In the dawn light, his eyes glowed like sea glass. "I've got a spare blanket. Take it."

It was soft and gray, a thin coverlet that used to lie across the foot of his bed. Forcibly, Emma pushed away memories of waking up with it bunched around her feet, yawning and stretching in the sunlight of Julian's room.

"Thanks," she whispered, sliding under the blanket. The grass was dampening with dew. Julian was still watching her, his head resting on his curved arm.

"Jules," Emma whispered. "If our witchlight doesn't work here, and seraph blades don't work here, and runes don't work here--what does that mean?"

He sounded weary. "When I looked into an inn, in one of the towns we passed, I saw an angelic rune someone had scrawled on a wall. It was splattered in blood--scratched and defaced. I don't know what's happened here since the Cold Peace, but I know they hate us."

"Do you think Cristina's pendant will still work?" Emma said.

"I think it's just Shadowhunter magic that's blocked here," Julian said. "Cristina's pendant was a faerie gift. It should be all right."

Emma nodded. "Good night, Jules," she whispered.

He smiled faintly. "It's morning, Emma."

She didn't say anything, only closed her eyes--but not all the way, so she could still see him. She hadn't slept near him since that terrible day Jem had told her about parabatai and their curse, and she didn't realize how much she had missed it. She was exhausted, her tiredness seeping out of her bones and into the ground beneath her as her aching body relaxed; she had forgotten what it was like to let consciousness go slowly, as the person she trusted most in the world lay beside her. Even here in Faerie, where Shadowhunters were hated, she felt safer than she had in her own bedroom alone, because Jules was there, so close that if she'd reached out, she could have touched him.

She couldn't reach out, of course. Couldn't touch him. But they were breathing close together, breathing the same breath as consciousness fragmented, as Emma let go of wakefulness and fell, the image of Julian in the dawn light following her down into dreams.

9

THESE LANDS

Kit soon had a new item to add to his list of things he didn't like about Shadowhunters. They wake me up in the middle of the night.

It was Livvy who woke him up specifically, shaking him out of a dream of Mantid demons. He sat up, gasping, a knife in his hand--one of the daggers he'd taken from the weapons room. It had been on his nightstand and he had no recollection of picking it up.

"Not bad," Livvy said. She was hovering over his bed, her hair tied back, her gear half-invisible in the darkness. "Fast reflexes."

The knife was about an inch from her chest, but she didn't move. Kit let it clatter back to the nightstand. "You have got to be kidding me."

"Get up," she said. "Ty just saw Zara sneak out the front door. We're Tracking her."

"You're what?" Kit got yawning out of bed, only to be handed a pile of dark clothes by Livvy. She raised her eyebrows at the sight of his boxers but made no other comment.

"Put your gear on," she said. "We'll explain on the way."

She headed out of the room, leaving Kit to change. He had always wondered what Shadowhunter gear would feel like. The boots, pants, shirt, and jacket of sturdy, dark material and heavy weapons belt looked uncomfortable, but--they weren't. The gear was light and flexible on, despite being so tough that when he took the dagger from his bedside and tried to cut the arm of the jacket, the blade didn't even part the material. The boots seemed to fit immediately, like the ring, and the weapons belt sat light and snug around his hips.

"Do I look all r

ight?" he asked, appearing in the hall. Ty was gazing thoughtfully at his closed right hand, a rune glimmering on the back of it.

Livvy gave Kit a thumbs-up. "You absolutely could have been rejected from the yearly Hot Shadowhunters Calendar."

"Rejected?" Kit demanded as they started downstairs.

Her eyes were dancing. "For being too young, of course."

"There is no Hot Shadowhunters Calendar," said Ty. "Both of you be quiet; we need to get out of the house without being spotted."

They crept out the back way and down the road toward the beach, careful to avoid the night patrol. Livvy whispered to Kit that Ty was holding a hair clip that Zara had left on a table: It worked as a sort of homing beacon, pulling him in her direction. She seemed to have gone down to the beach and then walked along the sand. Livvy pointed to her footprints, in the process of being washed away by the rising tide.

"It could have been a mundane," said Kit, for argument's sake.

"Following this exact path?" Livvy said. "Look, we're even zigging and zagging where she did."

Kit couldn't really argue. He set his mind to keeping up with Ty, who was practically flying over the dunes of sand and the boulders and uneven rocks that dotted the coastline more thickly as they moved north. He scaled an alarmingly tall wall of pitted rock and dropped down on the other side; Kit, following, almost tripped and landed face-first in the sand.

He managed to regain his footing and was relieved. He wasn't sure who he least wanted to look like a fool in front of, Livvy or Ty. Maybe it was an equal split.

"There," Ty said in a whisper, pointing to where a dark hole opened up in the rocky wall of the bluff that rose to divide the beach from the highway. Tumbled piles of rock jutted out into the ocean, where waves broke around them, casting silvery-white spray high into the air.

The sand had given way to rocky reef. They picked their way carefully across it, even Ty, who bent to examine something in a tide pool. He straightened with a smile and a starfish in his hand.