Wystwood

44. The dagger that burns

Raeph drew his ebony dagger, and were it not for its soft whisper through the air, the blade may have merged with the encroaching shadows completely. The sisters watched the knife with hungry eyes, marking each whorl in its wood. Candle flames desperately clung to the roots of their wicks, contorting the shapes of twisted dogwood and shrivelled myrtle as Ada and Raeph backed toward the cavern's entrance.

"We should never have come here," he hissed between his teeth.

"You act as though you've forgotten our ways already," crooned the bird-seer. "Such a shame."

Hot fury flooded through Ada's veins, and her eyes flickered to the fae's feet, searching the gloom for the iron dagger. But she regretted it immediately as the seer's empty sockets and rattling beads snapped to her face, scarlet lips twisting back into a sneer.

"Oh, but an answer wasn't all you came for," she said and crouched down.

Her small fingers slithered into the shadows and found something stuck between two stalagmites. She drew it through the dirt, as a child would tow a toy train across a carpet, all the while keeping her pale mask tilted up at Ada. There came the smooth sigh of wood against metal, and the seer smiled, her sightless eyes seeing what others couldn't.

"We knew you'd one day return for it. Dealers always do, once they realise just how worthless their answers truly are." The fox-seer giggled, and her sister raised her hand. She grasped the iron dagger, encased within its wystwood sheath. "But I'm afraid you'll have to leave disappointed over that matter too."

"Though it does the dealer well, I think," continued the bird-seer, turning to place the dagger back onto its stone plinth, "to see that items once traded now belong to us alone."

There was no sweetness in their childish voices, only cruel mockery and lurking laughter. Raeph snarled at the bird-seer's back, and her two sisters delighted in his bared teeth and livid glare. So distracted were they, that they failed to notice Ada reach out and grab a clay bowl from the nearest stone shelf.

Ada took a step forwards, velvet swirling into a cloak of midnight as she shoved a palm against Raeph's chest. His snarl broke off as he staggered back, and bracing her boots in the dirt, Ada launched the bowl into the cavern. The snake-seer cried out, dodging beneath a ridge of stone while the fox-seer leapt towards the pile of cages.

The bird-seer turned, a moment too late, her beads flashing in the half-light as she heard clay crack against the cauldron. Powdered burdock root shuddered into the air, drifting up in motes of golden grace, like sparks sent out from the candles in a final splutter of life. The bird-seer gasped, just as Ada had in Florentin's caravan, and the pale dust curled into her lungs.

Her feathers hit the ground first, twisted tufts finding muddied edelweiss, and her mask streaking with grime. The dagger slipped from her fingers, and Ada leapt for it, grasping through circles of light. Her hand folded around a slip of wood, but when she wrenched it closer, it came back empty.

She had thought the seers fast before, for even with their decrepit bones and sunken skin, they had darted through the cavern with an agility that resisted their ancient bodies. But now, wrapped within a child's form, the seers slipped like shadows through the darkness. And like Ada's own shadow, the fox-seer rose up before her, slicing the iron knife into her chest.

Ada heard the seer's tortured shriek, caught the wicked glisten of iron, but saw only crushing black. It was not the vacant darkness of the cave, but something warm and solid, a kiss of leather across her frozen cheeks. Raeph had propelled his body into Ada's, and the iron dagger wavered in the empty space where her chest had been, before carving down Raeph's forearm.