Vault of Shadows (28 page)

“Why?” asked Shark. “Why would she do that?”

“I can only guess. Queen Mab and the Huntsman have done something very wicked, something truly evil. Sacrificing an innocent on a sacred spot. That is a terrible sin and it would offend the ghost of the witch. She would want revenge, but she would also need to know what was
happening. Appearing as Lizabeth was probably her way of trying to understand us.”

“So . . . you're saying that wasn't Lizzie at all?” asked Shark. He pawed at the tears in his eyes.

Evangelyne chewed her lip. “I really don't know. The power of that shrine might have brought Lizabeth's spirit back too. We may have seen both of them at different times. And it's even possible they are sharing the same spirit body. They may have become fused together.” She shuddered. “This is ghost magic and it is beyond my understanding. All I know is that this foul murder has given power to the queen and the Huntsman. There is so much old power there. It must have been like . . . like . . . What do you Daylighters call it when you use one car to energize another one?”

“A jump start,” said Milo in an empty voice. “Is that all Lizzie was? A bit of juice for that . . . that . . .”

He stopped because he didn't know any word bad enough to describe the Huntsman. He wanted to throw up, but he kept it down, and kept his fury inside. It burned him, though. He could feel it leaving scars on the walls of his soul.

“Milo,” said Evangelyne, “I know it hurts to hear this, but . . . yes. I think that's exactly why they picked her. Her innocence was a great source of power, but the ritual must have awakened the Daughter of Splinters and Salt.”

Milo dragged his arm across his eyes. “If they got power from . . . from . . .” He couldn'
t say the word. He shook his head angrily. “If they got so much power, then does that mean the queen is free?”

Evangelyne shook her head. “We'd know it if she was. No, I think something must have happened during the sacrifice. My guess—and it is only a guess—is that the Daughter somehow interfered with the transfer of magical power. It is, after all, her shrine. I think the queen and the Huntsman will need to try it again, as they tried when they almost lured you, Milo, into the ring. They'll keep trying until they murder another innocent, but next time they won't risk doing it on a sacred shrine. That was a risk that might have made them invincible, but it backfired.”

“Backfired?” cried Milo. “Lizabeth is
dead
!”

“I know, Milo . . . and I'm so sorry.”

“Where is she?” asked Shark. “Her body, I mean?”

Fenwillow spread her leafy hands. “I'm sorry, but I don't know.”

“I don't know either,” said Evangelyne. “Buried, maybe. Or taken by the Huntsman. All any of us ever saw yesterday was her ghost.”

“It doesn't make sense. She wasn't all the way inside the faerie ring. I saw her, I should know.”

Evangelyne shook her head. “You said that her legs were inside and the rest of her was outside. If she was inside the ring when she died, she would have fallen down across the arc of the ring. Her legs would be closest to where she stood.”

Shark put his head between his hands, and his sobs filled the train car. Grief was like a whip that kept hitting them and hitting them. Mook laid a heavy hand on Shark's shoulder.

“Mook,” he said softly.

“Maybe Lizzie's not dead,” said Shark, his voice thick and his face streaked with tears. “I touched her. She was
real.
She wasn't a ghost.”

“Have you ever touched a ghost before?” asked Evangelyne.

“Well . . . no . . .”

“Then how would you know what one feels like?”

“But you're talking
ghosts.
You can't touch them. It'd be like trying to grab smoke.”

The wolf girl shook her head. “It doesn't work like that, Shark. There are as many kinds of ghosts and spirits as there are sprites. Thousands of them. Even we Nightsiders don't know all of them.”

“You don't?” asked Milo, surprised. “But I figured they were part of your world.”

“Why would they be?” asked Fenwillow. “We are alive. Ours is the world of living things, even if we are strange to you Daylighters. Ghosts are not part of our world any more than they are part of yours.”

To Evangelyne Milo said, “But you said the Heir of Gadfellyn Hall was a ghost.”

“And so he is,” she replied, “but I never said he was a Nightsider. He is what he is, and no one I know can
claim to understand what that means. He's a dream, but one that lingers in the world. And he has dreamed so long and with such power that even his home, Gadfellyn Hall, lingers on as a kind of ghost. When we go there, we will all be stepping into the unknown. Mook and I will be as much strangers there as you and Shark.”

Fenwillow stared at her. “Gadfellyn Hall? You're going there? By the Goddess,
why
?”

Milo saw that Evangelyne was uncertain whether to decide whether to trust this young tree spirit, but in the end she nodded. The wolf girl carefully removed the Heart of Darkness from its pouch and extended her palm to show it to Fenwillow. The willow girl's eyes flew wide and she covered her mouth with two leafy hands.

“Goddess of Shadows! The rumors are true. You
do
have it.” She began to reach out to touch it, then instantly thought better and snatched her hand back. “I have heard the bats whisper about it. They tell of a great battle with this Huntsman and how many of them died to help you recover it. But you know bats gossip and brag. . . . I hardly believed it until now.”

“It's real,” said Evangelyne, “but it is also damaged. See? There is a crack through its heart, and we are all now in grave danger.”

Milo thought Fenwillow would faint, and once more there were sappy tears glistening on her cheeks. “Roots of Heaven!” she cried. “Tell me we are not all lost.”

“Shhh,” soothed Evangelyne, closing her hand around the stone. “
Shhhh, now. We have yet a chance of repairing it.”

Fenwillow straightened, and snapped her twiggy fingers. “That's why you're going to see the Heir. You believe the old stories are true.”

“I
hope
they're true.”

“What stories?” asked Milo. His heart was so heavy that he wanted to leave and get lost in the woods, to give it all up. To walk and walk until he could forget, but he knew that there was no place on any map where memories and the truth could not find you. It was hateful. The world was so cruel, so cold. Lizabeth was the gentlest and most innocent person he'd ever known, and the idea that it was those qualities that had urged the Huntsman to sacrifice her was beyond imagining. It was beyond sick. So despite his despair, he made himself remain a part of this conversation, this hunt. “What are you talking about?”

Fenwillow turned to him. “The Heir lives in a house with—”

“—a great big library,” finished Milo irritably. “The Impossible Library. Yeah, yeah, I know. What about it?”

When the willow girl looked surprised, Evangelyne quickly said, “Milo has prophetic dreams sometimes.”

“Oh. That makes sense, then.”

Does it?
wondered Milo.
Feel free to explain that to me.
But he didn't say this aloud, and instead gestured for Fenwillow to continue.

“
They say that the Impossible Library is where all books go when they die. Books that have been burned by people afraid of new thoughts or old wisdom. Books from cultures that have passed away into history, even into legend. Books that have been forgotten. The scrolls from the Library of Alexandria, which was burned by the Romans. The books from the Abbasid Library of Baghdad, which was destroyed by the Mongols. The lost writings of Archimedes, Plato, Agatharchides, Ctesias, Lucan, Protagoras, Hua Tuo, Tertullian; the
Necronomicon
; the
Badianus
manuscript, an ancient Aztec medical codex;
Cardenio
, a lost play by William Shakespeare; Homer's
Margites
; the missing volumes of Charles Dickens and Dr. Seuss; and thousands of others. And stories . . . so many stories written in journals and diaries and never shared.”

She paused, and her bark darkened as she became flushed with excitement. When she realized that everyone was staring at her, she turned an even darker shade. “Oh, I'm sorry. I rattle on, don't I? I—I love books. When I read them, I can hear the voices of the trees that were turned into book paper. When a tree becomes a book, it doesn't die. Stories are immortal. They exist—like ghosts, I suppose—in the care of him who lives in that library.”

“Okay,” said Milo grudgingly, “that's kind of cool. But how's that help us?”

“Reading all those books and learning all those secrets,” continued Fenwillow, “has filled the Heir with
the knowledge of the ages. Of all the ages. And because he is ageless and because all the great sorcerers and witches left our world to escape the Swarm, the Heir is thought by many to be the last true doctor of magic.”

“Ah,” said Milo.

Even Shark looked interested now, and he pawed his face clear of tears. “I get it now.”

“Getting to Gadfellyn Hall will be so difficult,” warned Fenwillow. “New Orleans belongs to the Swarm. The hive ship and all those 'troopers are there. And the Huntsman is either in league with Queen Mab or he's stolen her secrets to discover the magic himself. Either way, he will be more powerful than he was when you fought him before. How can you even hope to succeed? And what assurance do you have that the Heir will even help you? How would you
pay
him? Ghosts always demand payment, but discovering what it is they value is so difficult.” Her voice was rising to a hysterical note.

“Hey, hey, it's okay,” said Milo. Mook reached out and patted the tree spirit's gnarled shoulder, offering rough comfort. Fenwillow looked deeply distressed.

“This is crazy,” said Shark. “Sounds like it's impossible, but man oh man, I can't stand the thought of the Huntsman beating us. Not after everything that's happened.”

Milo stood up, walked over to the door, and looked out at the morning sun, wondering how it could have so little regard as to shine while someone like Lizabeth lay dead somewhere. It wasn't right. The skies should turn
cloudy and the world should weep for her. Even then there wouldn't be enough tears.

“When we started this,” he said without turning, “it was all about saving the world and stopping the Huntsman. Just yesterday morning it was all about that. Us and him. I could understand that. It was simple, like playing chess.”

No one spoke.

“Now everything's different. The more I find out about the way the world really is, the bigger, uglier, and meaner it gets. Most of my friends are dead or hurt. My dad's missing; my mom's somewhere, maybe dead. And now Lizzie.”

Outside the birds sang in the trees, and life—despite everything—moved forward. Still no one spoke.

“How are we going to do this? Get to New Orleans, slip past the Bugs, find this Heir kid, figure out how to pay him, get him to fix the Heart? I have no idea. Maybe we won't. Maybe we'll all die trying.”

Now he turned, very slowly, and every eye was on him.

“But I can tell you guys something, and you can believe it or not,” he said. “I'm going to kill the Huntsman. I'm going to make him pay for what he did. You hear me? I'm going to make him pay.”

Without saying a word, Evangelyne stood and walked over to him. She stopped and stared deep into his eyes. Then she wrapped her arms around him and hugged
him. A half second later Shark gathered them both in a bear hug, and then two huge rocky arms engulfed them all. Milo felt a thin, leafy hand on his shoulder, and a small furry body squeezed in between his ankles.

No one said a word.

No one had to.

T
hey gathered their belongings and stepped down from the boxcar. Fenwillow stood to one side, looking awkward and nervous.

“I will come with you, if you ask,” she said to Evangelyne. “I would give every leaf and every splinter of my heartwood to help you restore what has been damaged.”

“No,” said the wolf girl, “but there is something you
can
do for us.”

“Anything! I will jump into fire if you need that of me.”

Evangelyne smiled thinly. “I will not ask that, but what I need won't be easy. Tell me, do you know Oakenayl, son of Ghillie Due?”

Fenwillow went pale and took a half step back. Then she cleared her throat. “Of course. I mean, I don't
know
him, but I know
of
him.”

Milo caught something in her tone of voice. She was being defensive and trying to hide it. “Let me guess,” he said. “You don't like him either, right? What a surprise.”

“He has a certain reputation,” she said, blushing again. “
Oakenayl believes in the old ways and he has a well-known, um . . .
dislike
 . . . of Daylighters. Actually, he seems to have a dislike of most things, even other kinds of trees. He is a difficult person to admire.”

Milo almost smiled. So Oakenayl was a jerk even to the world of supernatural creatures. It figured.

“Oakenayl can be intense,” admitted Evangelyne carefully, “but he is no friend to the Huntsman. The shocktroopers have burned whole forests, and many of Oakenayl's family were killed.”

“How may I help?” asked the willow girl.

“Find him,” said Evangelyne. “He's in the Hummingbird Grove. Do you know where that is? Good. Go and tell him what's happened. Tell him everything. He may be difficult, but he can be trusted.”

“Trusted to do what?” asked Milo.

“To do what has to be done,” said Evangelyne, and beyond that she would not explain.