Black Swan Rising (42 page)

“Thank God!” he said, pulling me into his arms. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“It was the fog. It made me see terrible things, but it’s gone now.”

“Not for long,” Will said, holding me at arm’s length and turning me toward the Bronx side of the tunnel where a curl of mist lay at the entrance like a coiled snake. “We’d better hurry.”

At the end of the bridge was another gate chamber leading to the base of the tower. Without the fog it was easier to navigate, but still it was a difficult climb. My legs were shaking by the time we reached the base of the tower. I leaned against the brick wall for a moment to catch my breath, and then I looked up and saw a stairwell made of perforated iron spiraling up as far as my eye could see.

Just past one of the spirals was a narrow vertical opening in the wall; it looked like one of those slits in medieval fortresses built for archers to fire arrows through. There was a muted orange and yellow glow in it which baffled me, so I took a few steps to scrutinize it more closely, and then I gasped. The glassless window looked out on a block of apartment buildings, and two buildings at the end of the block were in flames. I shuddered with the thought of how many spark-sprouting tentacles could be growing throughout the city now, and how much of the city could be ashes by the time we subjugated Dee, if we did, but there was nothing to be done but try. Turning back to Will, who had enough on his mind, I pretended to be distracted only by profuse amber light, thick as honey, that was flowing down from the top of the tower.

“At least there isn’t any fog,” I said to Will.

He nodded, but I noticed that he looked drained.

“Have you fed tonight?” I asked. “I thought that’s where you were before you came to me.”

“Your call interrupted me,” he said.

“Do you need—”

He waved me away. “You need your strength. There’s something in this tower that drains energy. Can’t you feel it?”

Now that he mentioned it, I did. It felt as if gravity were stronger here, exerting a downward pressure on us. I had to grip the iron railing of the stairs to pull myself up onto the first step. As soon as my feet touched the iron staircase I felt the charge—an electrical current running down through the metal slammed into my body with the force of a Mack truck.

“Whoa,” I said, sinking down to my knees. “What
is
it?”

“Dee has set up an energy coil. The spiral stairs are the perfect vehicle for it. This is what’s pushing the fog out into the city—it’s like a giant fan.”

“How are we going to get past it?”

Will didn’t answer. I looked behind me and saw him slumped to the ground, his face ashen gray. “Will!” I called, and reached down to take his hand. A current of energy leapt from my hand to his.

Instantly his skin lost the gray tint and he opened his eyes. He sat up and looked at me, his silver eyes flashing like mirrors. “How did you do that?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Without losing contact with his hand I turned my palm up and saw that the compass stone embedded there was glowing. “Oberon said that the stone
grounded
me. I can still feel the energy, but now it’s flowing through me.” I stood up, pulling Will to his feet effortlessly. I felt the energy coursing through my body, but it no longer weighed on me. It felt, rather, as if I were standing beneath a cool waterfall. It felt . . . well,
energizing
. “Come on,” I said, “keep ahold of my hand.”

Climbing the spiral stairs was easy now. It was as if I were being carried upward on a spiral escalator. The whole stairway thrummed with energy, producing a low hum that reminded
me of the song I’d heard in the wind. “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I said to Will over my shoulder. “I thought Dee was summoning demons, but this energy wave doesn’t feel evil—it feels great!”

Will laughed. “And what makes you think that evil can’t feel good? You made love to a demon last night. Are you telling me that didn’t feel good?”

I looked back at him and saw that he was shining like an alabaster vase filled with light. He looked more like an angel than a demon. “You’re not a demon,” I said.

“There are those who would disagree.” He smiled sadly and touched my face. The energy connection set off sparks. “At any rate, this energy isn’t good or evil—it’s just a conveyer, the engine behind whatever you send with it. Compared to the two demons that Dee has conjured, I
am
an angel. We’d better hurry.”

He looked so beautiful that I hated to turn away from him, but he was right. I continued up the stairs, but after the next flight Will put his hand on my arm to hold me back. “Wait.” He pointed to something above my head. “There’s someone—or something—on the stairs up ahead.”

I looked up and saw what he meant. Because the stairs were perforated you could see through them all the way to the top, but on the next level just below the top something blocked the flow of light—something large and dark. I watched it for a few moments without seeing any movement. “We’d better see what it is,” I whispered.

We took the remaining loops toward the top slowly and quietly. When we came around the last turn, I saw that the inert, dark mass was Oberon. He was pinned to the iron steps by a mesh of metal chains, as if a spider had spun a web of fine iron
and trapped him in it. His eyes were open, staring vacantly toward the top of the tower.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“It takes a lot to kill a fairy. I think he’s just
iron-klampt
.”

“But he said it was just the little fey who were susceptible to iron.”

“Usually it is, but this is a lot of iron and Dee must have rigged a net to catch him.”

I knelt down and looked into Oberon’s face. His eyes were the opaque white of milk glass—lifeless marbles. And his face was contorted in a rictus of pain. He had tricked me, left me to die, but I didn’t like seeing the King of the Fairies pinned and trapped like a housefly. I laid my hand on his chest to feel for a heartbeat, and the blind milky white eyes revolved in their sockets toward me.

“Marguerite?” It was a hoarse croak, barely audible through dry, cracked lips.

“It’s Garet. Here, let me take these chains off you.” I plucked at one of the chains with my fingers, but it was weirdly heavy. I pulled harder, but I couldn’t budge it. I turned to Will to ask his help, but he shook his head.

“He left you paralyzed. Why should we help him?”

Oberon shook his head weakly back and forth. “He’s right. You have no reason to trust me again. Besides, as long as the box is open, the force of its energy keeps these chains pinned to the iron beneath me. But once you close the box, the chains will fall away.”

“And then he’ll try to take the box from you,” Will said. “We should finish him off.”

“No!” I said with more force than I’d intended. “I won’t kill the King of the Fairies. He only did what he thought he had
to, and besides, I think he’ll be too weak from the iron to do anything to stop me once I have the box.”

“You’re right,” Oberon said. “Go! Just one thing. . . . When you get to the box . . . close it right away . . . don’t look into it.”

It felt like a fairy-tale admonition, but then, it came from a fairy. I was tempted to ask why not, but there wasn’t time for that. It seemed an easy enough thing to promise. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll come back for you.”

Oberon stretched his cracked lips over his teeth and I realized he was trying to smile. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be waiting right here.”

The room I stepped into was the same room I had seen under the river and on the TCM set, and through Madame Dufay’s eyes, but none of those perspectives had prepared me for what the room looked like now. I had noticed before that the walls behind the paintings were gold-colored, but now I saw that they were actually lined with panels of translucent, glowing amber. And I recognized the panels—they were from the famed Amber Room, built for the Catherine Palace of St. Petersburg in the eighteenth century, looted by the Nazis, then mysteriously lost in the aftermath of World War II. I had seen pictures of the ornate panels, but I had never heard that they
glowed
. It was as if some energy source had filled them with light. The whole room was pulsating with a honey-gold energy that set my teeth on edge and made my blood fizz.

The energy came from the shallow silver box sitting on the table in front of the fireplace. I looked up from the box and saw all that energy reflected in the amber eyes of the man seated before me.

“Welcome, Garet James. I had hoped you would make it. When I saw Oberon, I was afraid he’d already disposed of you.”

“Will saved me,” I replied. “You were wrong about my not being able to trust him . . . but then spreading dissension and doubt is what you’re best at, isn’t it? When you’re not preoccupied with physical destruction, that is.”

Dee smiled. “Oh, my dear, you really haven’t known me long enough to judge what I’m
best
at . . . nor should you be so certain that I was wrong about Will Hughes. I notice that he’s let you take the lead here.”

I glanced back to see that Will stood on the threshold of the room, his hands braced on either side of the doorframe.

“I can’t come any further,” Will said. “This energy field he’s created is too like sunlight.” To demonstrate, Will extended one hand a few inches into the room. Instantly his skin blistered and crisped.

“Stay back!” I cried, trying to go to him, but I couldn’t. I was stuck. The amber light filling the room wasn’t just light, it was made up of some kind of viscous substance—like the prehistoric sap that amber came from—and I was trapped like an insect in its sticky grasp. Or at least I thought I was. Although I couldn’t go back to Will, I found I could turn back around to face Dee. And when I tried, I found that I could take a step toward Dee. Or, rather, toward the box. The energy flowing out of the box created a pathway I could walk on. In fact, it seemed to be pulling me forward. I had to dig my heels into the carpet to keep from going any farther.

“Go on,” Dee said, slowly lifting his right hand and splaying his fingers toward the box. “It’s what you’ve come for, isn’t it? I’ll not get in your way.”

“Why not? You’ve certainly thrown enough obstacles in my way so far.”

Dee smiled . . . or, rather, he was
still
smiling, his lips frozen
in a lifeless grin. I noticed too, that his hand remained in the air, fingers fanned open. “I was curious to see how hard you would try to retrieve the box and whether you’d be able to make it here. I’m a very old man who’s lived a very long time. There’s not much that entertains me anymore, but your activities these past few days have been quite diverting.”

“Is that why you’ve unleashed the demons of Discord and Despair on the city? For entertainment?”

Dee shrugged. The gesture was supposed to look casual, but I noticed that his right shoulder remained hunched up to his ear. His hand was still in the air and his face was frozen in the same smile. “Let’s just say that every once in a while I like to shake things up and see what falls out. This time it’s you who’s landed on my doorstep.”

“So you don’t mind if I take the box?”

“If you can take it, my dear,” he said, lifting one eyebrow, “you’re welcome to it.”

The eyebrow remained cocked. I realized now what was wrong with the way Dee was moving. Each motion was labored and, once made, he was fixed in that position. He’d been sitting in the amber electric field so long that he was stuck in it, while I could still move—as long as I moved toward the box. He wouldn’t be able to stop me from taking the box.

I took a step forward. It was like walking on those moving walkways in the airport—one step seemed to take me three steps forward. I was inches from the open box . . .

Which Oberon had told me not to look in.

But if I closed the box, then the energy field might disappear and Dee would be able to move. Even though he’d told me I was welcome to take the box, I had no reason to believe he wouldn’t spring on me the minute he could. I’d have to wait
to the last minute to close it. Of course that didn’t mean I had to look in it.

I stepped forward and raised my hands to the box, keeping my eyes above the open lid. As soon as I touched the lid, though, I had that feeling I’d had when I first touched the box in Dee’s shop—as though it belonged to me. What harm could it possibly do me? I looked down.

At first the light was so bright it blinded me, but then, slowly, my eyes adjusted to the glare and I could see perfectly. I could, in fact, see for miles. For inside the box was another world—a world of green meadows starred with wildflowers and stitched with clear streams. I could hear the purl of the running water and smell the wildflowers.

I leaned closer to the box and the meadows rolled toward a stone tower that looked familiar. I came closer—I felt as though I were flying over the hills, skimming the high summer grass like a lark—and saw that the tower was reflected in a still, clear pool. It was, I realized with a thrill of recognition, the tower and pool from my dreams, only instead of one black swan, a dozen white swans glided across the crystal surface.

“Do you recognize it?” Dee’s voice came as if from far away although he was only a few feet behind me.

“I’ve dreamed about this place”—another memory prickled at the edge of my consciousness—“and heard about it. This is the place my mother used to tell me about. The Summer Country, she called it, or the Fair Land. I thought it was just a story she made up.”