Pernicia and the merrel plunged deep into the earth, and the gulf round them spasmed, spewing raw, dry, mouldy earth and fragments of ancient root and stone; and then it snapped shut with a sound like hundreds of anvils banging together, and the noise fell upon everyone as hard as a giant’s blows, and their breath was knocked out of them. But the floor where those two had disappeared rose like a mountain, and avalanches tumbled down its sides, and there was a roaring, echoing noise like many angry taralians in a narrow valley, and there was so much fine grit in the air that as the people in the hall opened their mouths to drag their breath in again after losing it to the recoil of the closing of the pit, their mouths and throats were instantly full of it, and they coughed helplessly, and their lungs ached. Frightened, baffled people pressed themselves back, nearer the heart of the house, away from the front of the Hall and the mountain that had risen up there, dragging their still-sleeping comrades to what safety they could.
One of the walls of the Hall cracked and buckled and fell down, and the sounds the splintering wood made were like human screams. The walls on either side of it tottered and bent toward it, like grief-stricken friends toward a fallen companion, like Katriona and Narl over Rosie; the wreckage shot across the broken floor, dangerous chunks of lathe and plaster thrown skidding up miniature peaks and launching themselves into the air on the far sides, though the central mountain was beginning to subside again in showers of chips and clods of earth. Tapestries belled out as if blown by the breath of giants; several were torn from the wall, and one skimmed round the stricken room like a bird before it fell upon what had been the high table; half of the table still stood, while the other half was a ragged heap of broken posts and planks and food and serving ware.
Rosie was only half aware of the destruction round her. Katriona had peeled the worst of Pernicia’s binding magic away from her face and hands, but as shattered furniture and bodies slid this way and that across the writhing floor, Rosie was separated from both her and Narl and, dizzy and nearly helpless, fetched up against something solid. She groped at it, and discovered one of the legs of the high table at the end that was still standing, and slowly worked her way upright. The bowed body next to her was familiar, its arms braced against the tabletop, but it took her a moment to recognise it: Rowland, bent protectively over something, and once she knew him she guessed what, or rather who, that something was. Rowland looked up then and recognised her; and in a lull in the diminishing sounds of destruction he said hopelessly, “Is there anything you can do?”
Rosie stopped herself from shaking her head. She found an overturned chair with a missing back but four sound legs, righted it, and knelt on it, looking into Peony’s face. Her face was thinner and paler than it had been—last night? Was it still only last night?—and her breathing, as Rosie bent low over her, sounded strained, as if a weight pressed on her breast.
Rowland moved back a little, as if to give Rosie room, or as if he couldn’t bear to look any longer, to watch Peony’s life ebbing away from a wound neither of them could see.
Rosie, tired and bruised and miserable and shaken and sick as she was, felt her own life beating strongly in her, and reached out and took Peony’s hands. She stared at her friend’s face for a moment, at the face so like and unlike her own, and then she let go with one hand long enough to reach in Peony’s pocket, and find there the spindle end she had made for her, and drew it out, and put it between Peony’s hands, and clasped her own round them. One of the merrel’s feathers came loose from Rosie’s matted hair, and drifted down to lie on Peony’s breast.
Something—something—some nonmagic moved between them. Princess, not-princess, two young women who had traded places, who had pretended to be one young woman, who had become two other young women. Rosie with her strength and her careless energy, her generosity to everything that lived; Peony with her gentler kindness, her subtler understanding, and an elasticity that had never been a part of Rosie’s nature.
Narl came up beside her. There were stained scraps of cloth wrapped round the palms of his hands, but when he put his gently round hers, Rosie felt him adding his strength of hope and love to her own, and she cared about nothing but that he should help her bring her friend back to life.
Katriona was moving through the Hall, waking those who still slept, against whom Pernicia’s savage, ensnaring spell had struck hardest, the fairies, the magicians, the royal family. She had a long way to go to reach these, and even with Zel providing a safety line the way was ugly and dangerous. The king and the queen and the three princes she awakened first, drawing them back tenderly and carefully from the sticky, heavy emptiness where their spirits had been suspended; and several of the queen’s ladies, who had pulled their queen and her family bodily away from the wreck of the Great Hall, burst into tears. Osmer woke up first; he looked round, half hearing the nearest lady’s attempt to reassure him that the wicked fairy was gone and he was safe, and an admiring amazement came into his face. “I’ve been
asleep
? I wish I’d seen
that
!” Katriona discovered that she could still smile, and moved on.
She found Barder, who was easily awakened, and Aunt, who was not, and Ikor, who was harder yet, and even after his eyes were open, Katriona could see the ends of nightmares in them, gleaming like toads’ backs. She turned then to the other Gig fairies, and when she had recalled them, Aunt and Ikor had recovered enough to help her awaken the other royal fairies and magicians; it took all three of them to awaken Sigil, whom they might not have found at all but that they were sure she had, after all, attended the ball. She had lain under a fallen-down tapestry, and she was so small and drab, even in her ball clothes, that she looked like a crumpled fold of vague foresty background to the bright woven scene of ladies gathering flowers. She opened her eyes with her head on Ikor’s arm, facing a window, and the first thing she saw was briar roses: “Dear Woodwold,” she said.
Lastly, and as gently as they could, they woke Lord and Lady Prendergast and their sons and daughters, who woke to find the Great Hall, the oldest part of their ancient and beloved house, destroyed, and for a little while the thought of a wicked fairy defeated and their country and future monarch saved seemed too small a victory to them.
Katriona wearily moved back toward the table where Peony lay, where Rowland stood and Narl and Rosie crouched over their joined hands. The stallion, Gorse, stood behind Narl, and several dogs were scattered round the table’s end. One of them—her name, Sunflower, swam into Katriona’s mind—had her feet up on the edge of the table, where she could just raise her chin high enough to stare into Rosie’s face. Gorse was as bedraggled as a wild moor-horse, and had strange marks on his flanks, as if he had squeezed through a space too narrow for him; the dogs’ chests were all matted with foam. Katriona guessed that this was part of the story of how they had pulled down Pernicia’s castle; and wondered what else she had missed while she was asleep. But those stories could wait.
Katriona was exhausted.
Never attack a spell head-on,
Aunt had said years ago.
You need to sniff out where the weak places are. All spells have them; it’s just a matter of finding them . . . and, of course, being able to use them.
Katriona could not have found nor used the weak spot of Pernicia’s spell. Not alone. She looked down at a small pointed red-furred face looking up at her.
I am still here,
Zel said.
I am still here.
They were all still here, and they were all still alive.
She stood at the end of the table, looking down at the top of Peony’s head, at Rosie’s face, fierce with concentration; and Narl looked up at her and said, half shouted, “Kat! Wake up! Don’t you want to
keep her
?”
Katriona did not at first know what he meant, but she responded to the desperation in his voice, and saw that Peony, now alone in all the Hall, remained asleep; and obediently she put her hands out, and laid them as gently as she could on the burned backs of Narl’s hands. But with that contact she realized the intricate interlacing of energies at play beneath her palms—discovered, too, the secret Narl had been hiding in his forge for many years—and suddenly understood what Narl had meant. Her fingers bit down against Narl’s skin, and she put every mote of magic she had left in her into the work, for Pernicia was gone, and she could use her last strength as she chose.
Aunt looked up from where she was rubbing the temples of a young fairy with a headache, catching a whiff or a whisper of what was happening among the remains of the high table; Ikor, in one of the anterooms strapping the sprained ankle of one of the grandest of the royal magicians, leaped to his feet and ran back into the Hall, shouting, “No, no! You cannot! No—”
Rosie leaned forward, round the globe of hands, and kissed Peony on the lips.
Everyone’s hands collapsed inward as the spindle end shattered; Rosie felt an eerie, sucking sensation against her palms for a moment as she involuntarily fell forward onto Peony’s breast, and a queer, fluttery, disorienting sensation in her own breast and throat, as if something were being pulled out of her and drawn into her friend. Narl and Katriona both took a sudden, hasty step backward. Rosie sat up, spitting Peony’s hair out of her mouth as Peony said,
“Oof.
Rosie, you weigh a
ton
.”
It was at this moment that the cook came howling up from the kitchens saying that Lady Prendergast’s terrier and two mice were lying asleep in the centre of the kitchen table with a single long black hair twisted round them in a circle, that nothing could pass that boundary hair, and would some fairy please come and get these animals
off her table
?
CHAPTER 23
Woodwold was not the only house that had suffered in the final confrontation between Pernicia and the princess and the princess’ allies; all over the Gig there was wreckage as if by tiny, violent, very local storms, or duels among goblins or a fire-wyrm or two. There was a great deal of work to be done to set all to rights. But no one’s village had been flattened, and friends and family gave housing and help to those who had been unlucky; and the crops and the animals were largely unhurt, although the latter in some cases had strayed so far some humans suspected they had been ill-sent or driven, especially when, after their initial journeys, hitherto stolid beasts showed a tiresome new urge to wander. And, of course, as soon as the news of Pernicia’s final defeat went out (and everyone shook themselves and stared at each other and said, “How could we ever have imagined that Pernicia had just
gone away
? That was a very powerful spell!” And everyone was a little annoyed, especially because no one could remember the end of the ball and the appearance of Pernicia, which must have been one of the best stories if anyone could tell it, but then, it was king’s business and magic, and all’s well that ends well), everyone in the Gig was a hero. This pleasant knowledge helped the work go a little quicker, as did the amount of volunteer labour that poured in from all over the rest of the country, to hear the tales of heroism firsthand in return for some digging and dragging and sawing and hammering and heaving and putting together. The volunteer labour and free goods came even more thickly when the announcement of the wedding went out.
Prince Rowland Jocelyn Hereward and Princess Casta Albinia Allegra Dove Minerva Fidelia Aletta Blythe Domnia Delicia Aurelia Grace Isabel Griselda Gwyneth Pearl Ruby Lily Iris Briar-Rose’s marriage was celebrated only six weeks after the death of Pernicia and the merrel beneath the ruins of Woodwold’s Great Hall. The princess insisted that she wished to be wed in the Gig, from Woodwold, and the Prendergasts—whatever damage had been done to their family’s ancient home—were incapable of saying no to her about anything whatsoever, aside from the fact that it was a tremendous honour. (And, of course, as a result of the prospect of the princess’ wedding, every royal fairy and magician put their minds to the work of restoring the Prendergasts’ Great Hall, which was the only possible location in the entire Gig for such an occasion as a royal wedding, so that it nearly put itself back together and was, furthermore, now glistening with powerful new spells and good wishes, fully sound and solid and complete by the day. The new Great Hall, indeed, was so lofty and beautiful that the king’s bishop was almost reconciled to having to hold the most important wedding of this generation in the barbarian, backwater Gig instead of at his own noble cathedral in the royal city.)
Rosie and Narl were the bride and groom’s First Friends (although the queues of attendants behind both of them were several dozen strong, and there was a certain amount of sniffing and eyebrow raising that a horse-leech and a smith, however dear the friendship, should come at the heads of the columns). Both of them felt extremely silly in the royal getups they were expected to wear, but both felt so complacent about their part in what had occurred, with this wedding as its culminating feat, that they almost forgot to mind. (Since Rosie had begun to let her hair grow so that she could braid the merrel’s feathers into it, at least the ladies assigned to her hairdressing for the wedding, unlike those who had tried to dress it for the princess’ ball, had had a little to work with. Rosie’s godmothers’ gifts appeared to have stayed with her even when being the princess had left her, and her hair grew at a cracking pace, as if it had been impatiently waiting its opportunity for the last seventeen years. But the curls, while initially just as bumptious as ever, began to hang out of their own weight as they spilled past her shoulders. The royal hairdressers had taken full advantage, thinking, rightly, that there was fairy work in it somewhere, but grateful that this tall young woman would not spoil the show.)
Rosie privately thought that Narl was taking Peony’s marriage remarkably well, but when, a week later, they had seen the wedding party set off for the royal city, and Rosie was beginning to realise just how much she was going to miss Peony (who, with twenty-one new names to choose from, had chosen to remain Peony), she couldn’t stop herself from saying something about it to Narl. At least they might be able to share their sense of loss.