The Iron Raven Page 4

  “Well, that was fun.” I laced my hands behind my head and grinned at Keirran. “Nothing screams ‘exciting evening’ like cowing a bloodthirsty mob and sending them scurrying back into the dark. Though you went right to the fire-and-light show there, princeling. I could’ve handled it in a less...direct manner, you know.”

  “A rain of frogs is not subtle, Puck,” Keirran replied, but he wasn’t looking at me. His attention was riveted to the stranger, who had dropped to a knee before him and bowed its cowled head. “Nyx,” Keirran said matter-of-factly. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you, Your Majesty,” came the reply from under the cloak. “My apologies for causing such a disturbance. I forgot the fey of this era have not seen my kind before. Apparently, I startled the faery with the blood-soaked hat, and it acted on instinct. I did not mean to draw blood in the market.”

  Keirran frowned. “No one should have faulted you for defending yourself. And I told you before, you don’t have to bow to me every time we meet. Get up.”

  Gracefully, the figure rose and brushed back the hood, and the comment about Keirran and proper fey protocol died on my lips.

  I’m a pretty old faery, and don’t take that the wrong way—it’s not like I’m some toothless hunchback in a rocking chair waving a cane and shouting, “Git off my lawn!” at neighborhood hooligans. What I mean is, I’ve been around awhile. When humans feared the dark and the things lurking in it, I was one of those things they feared. I have ballads and poems written about me. I made some writer dude named Shakespeare famous. Or maybe that was the other way around. The point is, I’m no spring chicken, and I’ve seen a lot. I’ve battled creatures from storybooks and had tea with legends. I know my faeries, myths, and monsters.

  I had never seen this type of fey before.

  She was sidhe, I could tell that much. Commonly referred to as high elves in more modern speak—thanks, Tolkien. Generally, there were two types of sidhe: the Seelie of the Summer Court, and the Unseelie hailing from Winter. Over the centuries, a few splinter branches had cropped up: dark elves lived underground, hated the sunlight, and had an unnatural obsession with spiders; wood elves kept to the forests and were of a more primal nature; and there were a couple clans of snow elves that rarely came down from their icy mountain peaks. But with a few differences in clothing and mannerisms, whether they would make you dance until you died from exhaustion or just stab you in the face, most sidhe were the same: slender, beautiful, otherworldly, and pointy-eared.

  This faery was all of those, right down to the knifelike pointed ears, but she was still something I had never seen before. And that made her the most intriguing faery I had met in centuries.

  She was shorter than most sidhe; I had several inches on her, and I’m not exactly tall. Her skin had a bluish-gray tint to it, not ghastly or corpselike but almost translucent, and tiny, star-shaped markings hovered under her eyes and spread across her nose like silver freckles. Beneath the cloak, she was clad in what looked like black leather armor, formfitting and leaving little to the imagination. Though I didn’t see any scabbards for the pair of glowing blades she had wielded; they seemed to have dissolved into thin air. Her long hair was silver-white, even brighter than Keirran’s, and cast a faint halo of light around her head. When she looked at me, I expected her eyes to be pale blue or black, or even silvery white with no pupils. But they were a luminous gold, like two glowing moons, and, looking into them, I felt my stomach drop.

  She was...old. Older than me. Maybe older than the courts. She didn’t look old, of course; her face had an almost childlike innocence that was quite jarring as she stared at me with the gaze of an ancient dragon. Age meant nothing to us, some of the oldest fey I knew looked and sounded like they were twelve, but...holy crap. Who was this faery, and where had Keirran found her?

  The stunned amazement must’ve shown on my face when I glanced at him, for he offered a grim smile. “Puck,” he began, indicating the faery before him, “this is Nyx. She’s a Forgotten. I met her when I was first investigating the incidents in the Between. She comes from a place called Phaed.”

  “Phaed?” I blinked in shock. I’d heard that name before, remembered it from an adventure with a certain Winter prince. “That creepy town in the Deep Wyld?”

  “It’s not entirely in the Deep Wyld,” Nyx said quietly. “Its borders touch the Between, so it drifts in and out of the Nevernever, manifesting itself only briefly.” She cocked her head, giving me an appraising look. “Although, I’m surprised that you’ve seen Phaed. Usually only the Forgotten, or faeries close to death, can find their way to the Town that Isn’t There.”

  “Ah, well.” I grinned at her. “You know me. The impossible has a nasty habit of landing right in my lap. Same goes with any type of curse, disaster, bad luck, or calamity. I’m a trouble magnet—one of the perks of being me.”

  “I see.” Nyx gave me that cocked-head, scrutinizing look again. “And you are?”

  “Robin Goodfellow. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”

  She pondered that a moment, then shook her head. “No,” she said clearly. “I don’t think I have.”

  “What?”

  I almost choked on the word. Nyx continued to watch me, completely serious and straight-faced. I waved a hand at an imaginary me off to the side. “Robin Goodfellow. Puck? The famous trickster from stories, poems, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The one who gave Nick Bottom a donkey head and made Queen Titania fall in love with him? Everyone knows who I am.”

  “Robin Goodfellow.” She made a point of thinking it over for another moment, then firmly shook her head again. “No, I’m afraid it’s not a name I’ve heard before.”

  A coughing sound echoed beside us. Keirran’s face was red, one fist pressed against his mouth, as he clearly tried very hard to hold in his laughter. I scowled at him, and he immediately took a quick breath and sobered, though his mouth still curled at the edges. “Sorry, Puck. Let me introduce you properly. Nyx, this is Robin Goodfellow, also known as Puck, personal servant to King Oberon of the Summer Court. He is...rather well-known, in Faery and the mortal world. That part isn’t exaggerated.”

  “My apologies.” Nyx gave a graceful, formal bow. “I meant no offense, Robin Goodfellow, but I have not been back in the world very long. My memories are fragmented, and I fear I have lost a great deal. Keirran has attempted to explain what has happened in the time I was gone, but the mortal realm has changed so much. Even Faery is unrecognizable.” Nyx shook her head, a haunted look going through her golden eyes. “Everything is so different now,” she murmured. “The last thing I remember is being with my kin in the Lady’s service.”

  “The Lady?”

  “The Queen of the Forgotten,” Keirran said.

  “Then...” My brows shot into my hair. “Wait, you’re telling me she was around when the Lady ruled the Nevernever?” I asked incredulously. “As in, before the courts? Before Summer and Winter even existed?”

  Keirran nodded gravely, and I let out a breath in a rush. Nyx wasn’t just old, she was primordial. True, I had seen the mortal world change, and Faery with it, but I had been awake through the whole process. I’d seen the great forests cut down and replaced with cities. I’d seen humans’ belief in magic fade away as they turned to science, computers, and technology. I’d adapted, as had all fey—the ones who’d survived. I couldn’t imagine waking up and finding everything and everyone I knew gone, and the world a vastly different place than the one I left.

  Honestly, she was handling it far better than I ever would.

  Though, her being a servant of the Lady, the Forgotten Faery Queen who had tried to take over the Nevernever a few years back, was mildly concerning. If Nyx was a Forgotten, Keirran would be her king now, but only because he’d killed the Lady in the war with the Forgotten several years back. That was probably another shock: waking up and finding that not only had the world chan
ged, but the queen you served was gone and three new courts had taken her place. I know I’d be shocked if one day I woke up and Oberon was no longer king. If Titania was gone, I’d be devastated; who would I play all my hilarious pranks on then? I didn’t have to worry about her, though. That basilisk would live forever on spite alone.

  “Nyx,” Keirran said, interrupting my musings. “Why are you here? Last I heard, you were going back to Phaed to check on things. Did something happen?”

  “Yes.” The faery turned to Keirran with a grim expression. “You must come with me to the Between, Your Majesty,” she implored. “Something terrible has happened. The town, the fey there...they’re gone.”

  3

  HOUNDS IN THE MIST

  Keirran straightened. “Gone?” he repeated. “Did they all Fade away?”

  I repressed a shudder. Fading was the term for a faery who was slowly ceasing to exist. It happened sometimes to fey exiled from the Nevernever, as the magic and glamour they needed to survive was cut off. But it could also happen if mortals simply stopped believing in us, when our stories and tales were replaced with shiny new distractions, when our names faded from memory. The Forgotten were faeries no one remembered anymore, and before Keirran had become their king, they’d been in danger of quietly vanishing from existence, with no one the wiser.

  It was a pretty sucky situation, but at least with Keirran as their king, the process seemed to have slowed, if not halted completely. He remembered them. The Forgotten King made sure to know each and every one of his subjects, making sure they did not Fade away through sheer force of will. And maybe because he was partly human, or because he was just as stubborn and willful as his parents, it seemed to be enough. For now.

  “I don’t know,” Nyx replied, her voice somber. “Perhaps? Most of the Forgotten left town with the Lady when she woke up, but a few remained. The Fade has always been a slow, inevitable decline—many of us linger and drift in and out of existence for years. I find it difficult to believe they all vanished so quickly, and at the same time. Please.” She took a step toward Keirran, imploring. “You’re our king now. The Lady is gone, and the other courts won’t help. We can depend only on you. Will you return with us to Phaed?”

  “Yes.” Keirran raked a hand over his scalp. “Of course.”

  “Wait wait wait.” I held up a hand. “Us? Are you using the royal we or did someone else come with you?”

  A loud, despairing sigh echoed behind us.

  “How very typical,” said a slow, contemptuous voice that could belong to only one creature in the entire Nevernever. “I was hoping that, were I not present, a decision could be made quickly and we could get underway. But even in dire circumstances, it seems nothing can ever be decided without having to talk it to death. I will never understand.”

  I saw Keirran wince, and even I stifled a groan as we turned around. “Oh hey, Furball,” I said, meeting a pair of slitted golden eyes watching us from the shadows. “So, you’re here, too, huh? Fancy that. Well, if you decided to show, then things must be serious.”

  The eyes blinked, and a large gray cat materialized on a fence post where nothing had been before. “I am uncertain you know what that word means, Goodfellow,” Grimalkin said, plumed tail twitching behind him as he met my gaze. “The Nevernever could be crumbling under our feet, and you would make a joke about it.”

  “Well, duh. It would be my last chance to. If I have to stare Death in the face, I’m gonna do it laughing at him.”

  “Grimalkin.” Keirran stepped forward. “I take it you came here with Nyx?”

  The cat yawned. “She was looking for you,” he said lazily. “I happened to know where you were, or where you would be going.” His gaze slid to me. “I suppose it is fortunate that Robin Goodfellow is here as well. The journey will be entertaining, if nothing else.”

  I crossed my arms. “How did you even know where to find us?”

  Grimalkin blinked. “I am a cat.”

  Well, I should’ve seen that one coming.

  Grimalkin sniffed, waved his tail, and turned, gazing at us over his shoulder. “Are we finished here, then?” he asked in a voice of exaggerated patience. “The night is waning, and it is not a short journey to Phaed. If one of you could open the Between, we can get this endeavor started. That is, if you are done talking incessantly at one another.”

  I smirked at him. “But I like hearing myself talk. It’s one of my best qualities.”

  “I think perhaps you are confusing quality with quantity. In any case, we are wasting time. Which is another thing you are so very good at.”

  “I’m sorry, Furball, but who’s wasting time sitting here arguing with me?”

  I could feel the gaze of the Forgotten on me as I spoke. This faery who didn’t know my name or anything about me. It was such a mind-blowing notion: everyone knew who I was. Even humans in the mortal world had at least heard the name Robin Goodfellow or Puck, thanks to a certain famous wordsmith. She probably thought I was a buffoon, but that wasn’t unusual; most people did. Because that’s what I wanted them to think.

  “A waste of time, indeed.” The cat thumped his tail. He glanced at Keirran, who didn’t seem to be listening to us, his eyes shadowed and worried as he stood there with his arms crossed. “Shall we go then, Forgotten King? You know the way to the Between, do you not?”

  “Yes.” Keirran shook himself and turned, suddenly all business as he gazed over the fairgrounds. “The Veil is thin over by the fun house,” he said, indicating the way with a quick gesture. “We should be able to cross into the Between from there.”

  “We follow you, Your Majesty.” Nyx drew up the hood of her cloak, hiding her hair and star-speckled face from sight. “Lead on.”

  No one bothered us as we walked back through the goblin market, though we caught several fearful, wary, and downright hostile glances from the surrounding fey. Whether they were reacting to the Forgotten King, the Great Prankster, or the unknown faery beside us, I didn’t know. Maybe all three of us together. But the crowds seemed to melt away before us, until we were standing at the doors to the fun house, which were set into the laughing mouth of a giant clown head at the entrance.

  I grimaced and looked at Keirran. “Oh, that’s great. Nothing screams fun like walking into the jaws of a maniacal killer clown. Bet they gave a lot of kids nightmares with this thing.”

  “I don’t choose where the Veil is thin,” the Forgotten King replied, as Nyx gazed at the doors in open wonder. “The Veil is constantly shifting. Crossing into the Between can be challenging, because the places where one can enter never stay accessible for long. On the other hand, you can almost always find a way in, if you’re willing to search. Or wait.”

  “And miss out on the wonders that await us through the jaws of death?” I grinned and made a grand gesture through the gaping lips. “After you, princeling.”

  We walked through the clown jaws, which emptied into one of those giant tubes that would spin slowly if the place had power. Beyond the tube, we walked through a maze of dark, twisting corridors that would’ve been pitch-black had Keirran not lit the way with a globe of faery fire. The bobbing orb of bluish light cast eerie luminance over slanted walls decorated with clown heads, porcelain dolls, and other things that made you generally uncomfortable.

  Beside me, Nyx moved quietly, with a grace that went beyond the innate elegance of her kind. But her eyes were wide beneath the hood, gazing at everything with a mix of awe and utter confusion. When we turned a corner and came upon a clown mannequin hiding in an alcove, she jumped, and two curved glowing blades appeared in her hands like magic.

  “Easy there.” I reached out and rapped the dummy’s forehead with a knuckle. “Not real. No need to slice and dice yet. Though trust me, that reaction is probably why weapons are not allowed in these kinds of places. Lots of stabbed mannequins, I’d wager.”

  “What is
this place?” The faery lowered her arms, the blades vanishing like they were made of starlight. “What purpose does it serve?”

  “Purpose?” I shrugged. “To scare the pants off people? Humans like being scared nowadays. In a totally safe, nonlethal environment, of course. That’s where the ‘fun’ in fun house comes in.”

  She looked completely poleaxed. “Mortals want to be frightened now?” she almost whispered. “When I served the Lady, humans didn’t dare venture out alone at night. They didn’t need to invent terrors to frighten them—we did that.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I gave her a sympathetic smile. “Unfortunately, the days where mortals feared the dark and the things lurking in it are gone. True, there are still some forgotten places where humans remember and respect us, but for the most part...” I gestured to the mannequin and the things hanging from the walls around us. “Their world is so tame, they invent things that will frighten them, and pay for the experience of being scared.”

  The faery shook her head in disbelief. “So, this is why we’re Fading away,” she murmured, almost to herself. “They’ve forgotten everything about us.”

  That seemed to be a sensitive subject for the Forgotten, so I left it alone.

  We left the maze and stepped into a long hallway with mirrors on either wall. Not normal mirrors, but the ones that showed grossly distorted images where you looked like a bean pole or you had a bathtub for a butt. Nyx caught sight of her warped reflection and gasped, flinching back from the image staring through the frame.