42. A game of teeth

"You agreed to my terms of the pact," snarled Raeph, his hand now heating his knife's hilt.

"You know the way of dealings, young Wolf," replied the bird-seer. "The asker pays the price."

Raeph's boots turned up soil as he prowled past the cauldron and towards Ada. Though, even as the sisters remained hunched around the swirling steam, he kept his distance.

"I am the one who asks," he said.

"But not the one who gains. I hear the lies that lace your words," said the fox-seer. "The question is the girl's."

"The girl's, the girl's," giggled the snake-seer. "Come at last."

"And how far she has come." The bird-seer had yet to turn her head from Ada, beaded eyes suspended with their lifeless sight. "Not of our world, but taken from your own. You came from above, climbed up and up towards the sky, only to come plummeting down." Her voice grew louder, deeper and harsher, until spittle flew from her lips and sent her ancient body quaking. "The rise and fall, drenched wet to bone dry. I see it, I see the agony. The sun and the moon, the young and the old, the question and answer. You're no fae, traveller. So speak. Ask. Let us hear you, let me see you."

Even Raeph stilled as the seer's screeching faltered out. She braced herself on the stone cauldron, the wheezes expelled from her shrunken lungs shifting its steam. Raeph's face had paled, the hollows of his cheeks almost skeletal in the waning light. There was no contempt in his gaze now, but only a broken horror.

Ada straightened. She breathed in the stale air and felt thorns of fear stab across her body. The bird-seer's words echoed around her head, as if they had always been there, and always would remain. Her cloak's hood swelled around her neck, and fallen strands of hair were the only shrouds to brush her skin. She bared her face to the seers, and still, they didn't flinch as other fae had. They simply waited for her answer.

"No," Ada replied. "I'm not fae. I'm human."

"Human," breathed the snake-seer, and a collective shiver swept through the sisters.

"It's been many a moon since a human came to ask us their questions," mused the fox-seer. "Your kind used to be brimming with curiosity. So much so that it would spurt out from you with the lightest of pressure. Out from your mouths, and ears, and hearts. You never knew where to stop. You thought magic could solve all of your problems." A sickly smile twisted her lips back, and Ada could see her rotted gums. "What is your sated soul worth, I wonder?"

Ada felt the fox-seer circle around her, not within the cavern, but in some misty place inhabited only by the mind and the senses. The old fae woman was lithe in a way that her body was not, sharp and quick with each dart of her eyes and flick of her tongue. Questions and answers. The circles and sneering and smiles. It was a game of predator and prey, one with stakes set by knowledge and lost with a single misstep.

Ada held her ground, casting her eyes away from Raeph as he slipped his ebony dagger from its sheath.

"I know little of magic," she said, "but I know that questions keep the worlds turning. They keep us striving, and dreaming."

"Questions will burn holes through your mind," the fox-seer snapped back.

"Then answers will surely patch them back up again."

"And the question you ask? Will that mend your broken world?"

"I must believe that it will," replied Ada, and could sense the predator closing in. But she also knew what lay at peril if her question was not answered, her mind conjuring up portraits of her family in their faraway home, of Min in her caravan, and the bandits in the back streets. For them, she would pay the price.

As if realising her decision, Raeph started towards her, ebony catching the candlelight in cruel flashes and flickers. Ada spoke before he could reach her.

"Answer my question, and I will pay the tithe."

As one, the sisters drew a breath. The tattered edges of their clothing quivered, and the snake-seer's hands began clutching and contorting around some invisible lattice. The bird-seer wetted her lips, and from a threadbare sleeve, the fox-seer slipped a knife, its long blade marked with a red that was beyond solely rust. Ada's entire body was trembling.

Then, a store of edelweiss soared up into the vault of the cavern. Fair petals kissed their way across Raeph's black tunic as he tore through the air, downy leaves left flying in his wake as he threw his body between Ada and the seers. The falling flowers were soft as feathers as they tumbled to the ground, pirouetting in the final dregs of sunlight before casting a snowy blanket across the earth.

Raeph's chest heaved, and though Ada couldn't see his face, she could hear the snarl that rumbled up his throat. "You'll not take her blood. You can have mine or nothing."

The seers carried on as though they hadn't heard him, the fox-seer running a fingernail up her knife, testing its edge. Where the ebony dagger whispered, the seer's blade gave a grating whine. The bird-seer levelled a palm above the cauldron, stopping a hairsbreadth from its bubbling waters, and her voice was a murmur as she replied, "The dealing has been made. You of all should know that there can be no return, Wolf."

"Let others have some fun, boy" hissed the fox-seer, and her eyes glittered towards Ada. "How long, sisters, since we've been given the blood of a human? This moon has treated us well."

"Human, human, human" chanted the snake-seer to herself.

The fox-seer flinched, hands clenching and head jerking to one side, as if her spine was as rusted as her knife. She snarled, "What is it that troubles you, Sister?"

The snake-seer cringed back, the light slipping out from her sagged cheek hollows. She dipped her face into the shadows and answered, "How was this made to be? All the wystwood is gone, and even we have grown weaker since its fall. How was there power enough to bridge the worlds?"

"Do you think I heard wrongly?" spat the fox-seer, turning on her sister. "There were no lies in her confession."

The snake-seer cowered closer to the earth. "No, Sister. Never, I swear it. But I can taste the residue of magic in the air. She's been veiled, the marks cling to her flesh. If the veil was potent, then what's to stop a glamour? A change to make her appear human."

"You cannot glamour truth."

The fox-seer turned away, disinterested as she left her sister worrying marks into the soil. She lowered the tip of her knife into a candle flame, letting the feeble threads of fire wind through its crimson rust.

Scorches of scarlet laced Ada's mind, matching each spark across the blade as an idea formed in her mind. She placed her hand on Raeph's back. The man stilled, not even a breath loosing from his lips as Ada sketched a slow circle. She could only hope that he would hold her trust as she stepped away from him and faced the seers once again.

"There is a way I can prove to you that I am human," said Ada, and although her voice didn't rumble or ricochet, she held it steady. "Take your tithe with the knife of iron. See if it will not scorch my flesh."

"No, no! Not the iron! It will burn, burn us all!" The snake-seer crumpled back, hands clawing up her scaly neck and balling into her eye sockets. Even the fox-seer faltered, her dagger dipping down and gouging a lump of lard from the candle.

But the bird-seer cocked her head, beads rattling and dark feathers shivering. Her mask was cast in shadows, paled and pocked around the two black holes where her eyes should have been. When she smiled, it was like her face was splintering open.

"The iron dagger," she cackled. "Its blade has not drawn blood in decades. Think of how fresh it will be." The seer's fingers twisted through the air, grasping towards Ada. "Untainted."

The fox-seer's tongue darted from her lips, eyes flaring bright and feral. She turned to her sister, ignoring the whimpers of the snake-seer hunched by the stalagmites. "Who would do the drawing?"

The bird-seer paused for a moment, then reached out an arm, blindly feeling her way along the nearest shelf until her fingers found a clay bowl. She dipped her hand into it, rummaging around in a pile of small and tapered teeth. Ada shuddered as the seer withdrew her fist and held it out to her sister.

The fox-seer stared at her wrinkled knuckles, then said, "Incisor."

The bird-seer opened her hand, turning the tooth over in her palm and running a fingertip across its pointed tip. A smile contorted her thin lips as she tossed it into the cauldron.

"Canine"

The fox-seer hissed, her own teeth clicking together as she elbowed past her sister, shuffling between the rings of candlelight to the stone plinth. Ada stumbled back, feeling Raeph close at her shoulder as the old fae extended a bony finger. Its nail was pitch black, as though stained with soot and oil. When it touched upon an ivy leaf, its darkness began to spread, sweeping through the plant like a disease until its stem lay withered and its all of its leaves had curled and crumbled.

Reaching out, the seer grasped the wooden sheath of the dagger, lifting it from the plinth and into the light. The iron winked wickedly beneath the dancing candle flames.

"Come," she said to Ada. "To the cauldron."

The fox-seer pointed her blackened finger once more, and Ada felt Raeph's gaze locked upon her back as she staggered towards the boiling water. The seer followed, skeletal hands quivering as she clutched the dagger's sheath, and then, with a flick of her wrist, thrust it away. Her bare skin met iron, and the fox-seer's screams pierced the darkness as the knife branded her flesh.