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.

Where the fox-seer's cry of pain had splintered the air, Raeph's howl disturbed the rock and sent it quaking. It rumbled down the tunnels, even as he careened back, clutching his ebony dagger. The seer lunged after him, ready to sever flesh from bone, but instead of holding out his knife to strike back, Raeph thrust his bloodied arm into the darkness. There was a snap and a squealing of metal, and then the stack of cages came tumbling down.

Raeph had split the rope woven through their bars, and it whipped back, landing a lash across the seer's cheek before the first of the cages cracked against her skull. Her fox ears were lost beneath the cages, and dust surged up into the air as Raeph slouched back against the wall, chest heaving and his arm cradled against his tunic.

The musty air swelled beneath Ada's cloak as the last of the candles began to falter out. A single flame remained, struggling up from its puddle of lard and casting a dying pool of light. But it was enough to catch upon the iron dagger skittering across the earth. Ada dived forwards, hands clawing into the topsoil until she felt warm iron graze her skin.

Slim fingers closed around her wrist like a manacle. The hand gave a wrench, and Ada was dragged into the cavern, towards a glinting mass of scales. She scrambled back, her boots losing their grip and her legs buckling. A sharp pain seared her palm as the knife rubbed against the wound it had opened, and she jerked her head back, scouring the cave for Raeph. But there was no one in the darkness.

"You're alone, traveller. All alone." The final sister writhed out of the shadows, immaculate and hideous. Her eyes shone blue, brighter than a celestial sky, and when the snake-seer parted her rosy lips to speak again, Ada saw that her tongue had been cut in two.

"Ada!" The voice that ricocheted around the cavern didn't belong to a child, and the seer's eyes flared silver.

Raeph shouted again, Ada's name a ripple of thunder across his lips. But the cries were lost beneath a blanket of silence, as though he were calling out for her underwater. Ada searched the cave once more, but it was like a smokescreen had been drawn through the air.

Short nails dug into her flesh, and Ada winced, twisting back to find the snake-seer a whisper from her face. She tried to struggle away, heart pounding and limbs quivering, but the fae held her down. The serpent tongue flickered out of her mouth, almost brushing Ada's jaw.

"The great fall is yet to come. You can't stop it, and you can't destroy us." The snake-seer's breath was a fetid thing, soured with rot and an ancient decay. "We're already inside the walls."

Ada's hand fumbled in the darkness, tracing down her own ribs and over her hip, before alighting on the carved hilt of Solen's dagger. She felt the sun engraved beneath her palm as she thrust it up and into the seer's shoulder. The blade burrowed into flesh, and Ada realised she had been wrong before: cutting skin was not at all like cutting silk. She felt it puncture muscle and rip sinew, felt the pressure upon her palm as its silver hit bone.

She withdrew the dagger, every inch of her trembling as she scrambled back towards the entrance. Her hand was wet, fingers sticking at their seams as the pulse pumping through Ada's ears drowned out a child's yowling. The iron knife was nestled in her other palm, hot and heavy, as if yearning to taste the seer's skin itself. But Ada slipped both blades into a cloak pocket, her feet forging through shadows her eyes couldn't penetrate.

Ada heard her name; a whisper on a breeze, or the rumble of an earthquake, she couldn't quite tell. Then, coarse fingers were lacing between her own, binding her body to another's and tugging her into a run. The darkness danced across her skin and tried to drag her back, but her boots found rock, and soon she was staggering up a set of stairs.

From black shadows emerged stretches of scratched stone. The pathway widened, and the air grew clearer, even though it still scorched its way down Ada's throat in frigid gasps. Starlight dribbled through two rifts in the rock ahead, a single stone column spearing up towards an inky sky. Ada's fingers left Raeph's, as if the light had branded their touch, and she threw her body out of the cave.

Raeph's knees cracked down on salt as Ada's shaking hands grappled with shards of rock. Night had descended, snatching away the day's warmth and casting the valley into dusk. It tinted the salt grains clinging to Ada's wet palm grey as she doubled over, stomach heaving and eyes watering.

A wind whistled through the wystwood, and she retched again. A few metres away, Raeph panted into the salt, his breath coming quick and shallow, like the breeze had stolen away his oxygen.

"She won't be dead," he gasped.

Ada wasn't sure whether he had meant to soothe or warn her, but his voice calmed her shaking, and her eyes soon found their focus. She slid down onto the salt, velvet hood ruffling up around her neck as she watched the stars glimmer down from their heavens. Her eyelids were heavy as her gaze tumbled back to the earth, finally settling on Raeph's collapsed body, and the gash on his arm, which had turned a deathly shade of black beneath the crescent moon.