Forged Steel Page 7

  Eliaster's grin had a nasty edge. "I don't think they'd like it if they found one. Droch fhola are monsters, plain and simple. Though lucky for you, there hasn't been one sighted since before Bram Stoker's lifetime."

  "Charming."

  We rounded the corner and I stopped, staring at the sight spread out in front of me. We'd stepped into an enormous cavern—it seemed like it went on forever under the glow of enormous orange globes hanging from the fifty-foot ceiling. Thick cables and pipes crawled up the walls and looped across the ceiling, stalactites dripping from them. Houses shot up between rambling, non-linear streets paved in a variety of things—cobbles, wood scraps, tarmac, and dirt.

  "Whoa," I muttered. This is amazing.

  Eliaster looked at me like I'd grown horns—or whatever the fae metaphor for that look was, since horns probably weren't all that strange to him.

  I followed him in a kind of daze, craning my neck as I stared around me. It was so weird to see normal houses of all types, ranging from cottages to castles, stuffed into a cavern that could have given the Son Doong a run for its money. Thankfully we didn't have far to go, just a turn or two on an extremely winding street—if I'd been in top form I probably would have made a sarcastic comment about it.

  "So," I said, turning my attention back to Eliaster. "I may not have found out about different types of Sidhé, but I did discover a few things. For example, does salt really work to repel you guys?"

  He snorted. "Yeah, and we flock to people who set out bowls of cream. Does this look like The Elves and the Shoemaker to you?"

  "Excuse me for only finding out about all this stuff yesterday, Mister Snark." I sighed. "Okay, what about iron?"

  "Now that is real. If it touches full fae, it makes us sick and weak, and if it cuts us, it burns like hellfire. In general, though, the ancient legends got more twisted up in the telling and translating. I wouldn't rely on those as your single source of info."

  I rubbed my fingers against my palms. "So, crows aren't considered evil omens?"

  Eliaster stopped dead in the middle of the street and turned to me. "Okay, what did you say? And who did you say it to?"

  "I may have told Goldtooth to go to the crows."

  "I'm not sure if I should tell you that was one of the stupidest things you could do, or if I should be relieved you've got a bit of fight in you." Eliaster started walking again.

  "So it's really offensive."

  "Fae burn their dead. To tell someone to go to a bird that desecrates the dead by eating their flesh is offensive to the extreme. You're lucky Goldtooth had orders to take you alive, otherwise he might have stuffed his gun in your mouth and ended you right there."

  I snorted and looked away, mostly to hide the unease that kept growing in my gut like one of those expanding sponge toys dropped in a glass of water.

  We stopped at a big Victorian-style house painted blue and yellow. People seemed to prefer bright colors here in the Underworld—it was sandwiched between a hot pink cottage and a lime green cracker-box-shaped house. Eliaster stepped up onto the porch and knocked on the door.

  Larae barreled out of the house. She planted her fists on her hips and glared at him. "What is the meaning of sneaking off without telling me? Again, I might add."

  Eliaster rolled his eyes again—it seemed to be his automatic response to anything and anyone—and tried to edge around her.

  "Not this time, Eliaster." She poked him in the chest with a long manicured fingernail. "We agreed to keep each other in the loop. You broke that trust." Larae's gaze fell on me, and her lips pinched together. "And why is he here? I thought you said no Overworlders! In fact, as I recall, you threw a hissy fit about Josh getting even marginally involved."

  I was going to shrivel if she kept that death-ray glare trained on me any longer. Thankfully she looked back at Eliaster, her eyes starting to flicker between a deep purple-red and a lighter violet.

  "Does the word 'cipher' ring a bell?" Eliaster said. "None of us can break it. Maybe Josh can. Besides, if we didn't grab him, Blodheyr would have."

  After a few more seconds of staring each other down, Larae turned and stomped back into the house. Eliaster grabbed the screen door to keep it from slamming and motioned me inside. Larae pounded her way up the stairs at the side of the entry.

  The house smelled like a used bookstore—that dusty, musty, cigarette-smoke-soaked-paper scent. My shoulders relaxed a little. The front door opened into a long, thin hallway painted white and lined with framed photographs and paintings of ethereal landscapes.

  At the end of the hallway, a door swung open, and a tiny lady with a fluff of platinum-silver hair stepped out, dressed in khakis, a purple blouse, and a bright-red apron. A smile broke over her wrinkled face at the sight of us.

  "Hey, Roe." Eliaster gave her a big, genuine grin, and gave her an enthusiastic hug.

  "Eliaster." She kissed his cheek and turned to me. "Who is your friend?"

  Oh great. Little old lady kisses. "Uh, my name's Josh."

  She gave me a hug. Okay, maybe the kisses were only for people she knew. I gingerly patted her shoulders.

  "He's Marc's buddy. Genius Josh," Eliaster said.

  Did everyone down here know me by that nickname? Marc's butt was getting kicked when I found him.

  The woman nodded. "Marc spoke about you often. I'm his grandmother, Roe. And you all must be hungry. I was just getting lunch out of the oven." She moved to the bottom of the stairs and called up, "Larae? Lunch, dearest."

  "Not hungry," Larae yelled down, her voice muffled.

  The woman shrugged and headed back into the kitchen.

  Instead of following her, Eliaster pushed a side door open. "We'll eat in the library. Get a head start on this cipher."

  I followed Eliaster into a room with wood paneling barely visible between rows of bookcases. A couch, several overstuffed chairs, and a coffee table were drawn up in front of a fireplace about ten feet long. David, who was stretched out on the couch, twisted his head around.

  "Hey, you're back. Wondered where you'd gotten off to." He levered himself up.

  I sighed and collapsed into one of the overstuffed chairs by the fireplace. Eliaster dumped his duffel bags on the floor and took the chair opposite me. He kicked off his thick-soled boots and stretched his socked feet out to the fire. The firelight gleamed off a small, leaf-bladed throwing knife strapped to his ankle.

  "Amazing how quiet it can be when no monsters are chasing you," Eliaster muttered.

  I chuckled.

  Eliaster gestured at the bookshelves. "Everything you need is there somewhere."

  I glanced at them. Every shelf was stuffed to overflowing, books stacked two rows thick and papers crammed into every available inch. "Anything more specific than that?" I didn't exactly want to go digging around in a fae's private files.

  "For goodness sakes, Eliaster. Let the boy relax for a few minutes." Roe elbowed the door the rest of the way open, a tray stacked with steaming sandwiches balanced on one hip.

  David stood from the couch and took the tray from her.

  "Thank you, David. I'll go get drinks. Coffee, anyone, or would you prefer tea or water?"

  "Coffee," Eliaster and I said at the same second.

  "Lots," Eliaster added.

  She chuckled and left the room.

  David grabbed a sandwich from the tray and gestured at me with it. "So Eliaster disappears and a few hours later, comes back with you in tow. How did you convince him to let you come?"

  I shot Eliaster a glance. "He didn't really give me much choice."

  "I take it you'd rather have taken on those Unseelie by yourself." Eliaster left his chair, grabbed a sandwich, and sat back down. He pulled an onion ring off the sandwich and flicked it at David.

  "Hey." David picked the onion up and threw it back, clipping Eliaster's ear-point and leaving a smear of mayonnaise.

  The fae's nose wrinkled and he wiped the offending glob from his ear.

  Roe pushed open t
he door with another tray. She pressed one hand to her hip and raised her eyebrows. "Please tell me I didn't just see two grown men having a food fight in my library."

  "No, ma'am," David said, grinning.

  She put the tray on the coffee table and poured mugs for all of us. "So, Eliaster, did Aiden's notes tell you anything?"

  He nodded. "The coded document tells where an old fae relic might be found."

  Roe tipped her head to one side as she took a sip of the coffee. "That doesn't seem within Blodheyr's normal range of interests. Is it valuable, something he could sell on the black market?"

  "Oh, I'm sure it's valuable, but I don't think he'll be selling it. The Lucht Leanúna are back, and—"

  Roe stiffened and her face went pale. "They're not."

  "Aiden had a list of informants that, I'm assuming, he asked questions of. Angel is one of them. Before we came back here, Josh and I talked to him. He said the Lucht Leanúna wants the relic. Angel has no reason to lie to me."

  "He's Unseelie."

  Eliaster frowned. "Not anymore."

  "I don't think your father will believe that."

  Eliaster lurched upright. "I don't need my father's help with this."

  I watched them stare at each other, looking like big cats ready to pounce. David looked back and forth between them, his sandwich forgotten in one hand.

  "Did I miss something?" I injected as much sarcasm into my voice as possible—not hard. It was getting old for the fae to keep rambling about something I didn't understand.

  Eliaster sank back into his seat with a groan. "Lucht Leanúna. The Followers."

  I glanced at Roe.

  She sighed. "To understand why the Lucht Leanúna are so feared, Josh, you have to understand our history. Back in the old days, the Sidhé lived in a different world. Tir N-iall, the Other Land." Her voice softened a little. "That's our true home. It's where Sidhé belong. We visited this world often—maybe too often—and grew to love it also, but never as much as we loved Tir N-iall."

  Roe's voice sank into almost a singsong, as if she was reciting a story she'd heard a thousand timesbefore. "One of the fae, Fear, learned to mask his d'anam

  fuinneog. He began studying the forbidden arts of sorcery, twisting his glamour to evil purposes, and learned to summon sluagh and demons to his will. He killed our king and set himself up as ruler of Tir N-iall. The land withered under him. Those who opposed him began calling him Fear Doirich—the Dark Man.

  "And then we discovered he wasn't content with ruling Tir N-iall. He would rule all the worlds, and his next conquest would be this one. For some time, he'd been sending some of his loyal followers to earth to act as false gods. My ancestors retaliated by trying to close the paths. It wasn't easy. Fear Doirich's people fought back, and in the struggle, such great glamour was used that it destroyed all the known paths. Since that day, no one has passed between the worlds."

  Roe's voice died, and she looked down into her coffee cup. David resumed eating his sandwich. Eliaster stared into the fire, gnawing at his thumbnail. I realized I was leaning forward, biting my tongue against all the questions rising in my throat. The fae had lived in another world? What had it been like? I was picturing a beautiful land, the basis for all the fantasy stories I'd ever read as a teen, full of soaring mountains and rolling plains.

  Roe cleared her throat. "The Lucht Leanúna are followers of Fear Doirich that wish to find ways to open the hidden paths again, or make new paths. There used to be many of them both in the Seelie and Unseelie courts, but the two factions united and destroyed them—we thought. Every few years rumors rise again, but we've always been able to prove them just that—rumors."

  "I told you," Eliaster muttered. "I told you all years ago that Blodheyr was involved in something nasty."

  Roe gave him a sharp glance. "This is not a time to bring up a personal vendetta, Eliaster."

  His jaw clenched. He looked back into the fire.

  David grunted. "So they think this relic will…what? Help them open a path to Tir Ni-all again?"

  "Can't be," Eliaster muttered. "It would take some serious glamour to make something like that."

  "So maybe something that would allow them to communicate with Tir Ni-all, then?" David rubbed his chin. "Or something that could create a new path?"

  "That's impossible," Roe said sharply.

  Eliaster grunted.

  "So let me get this straight." I rubbed my head, trying to grasp everything I’d just learned. "In short, you just dragged me into the biggest mess in fae history."

  "That might be slightly exaggerated," Roe said.

  "Nah, I agree with him." David leaned back into the couch cushions. "I've more experience with fae and the Underworld than Josh, and I don't even want to be involved with this."

  "But if Josh doesn't help us…" Roe pursed her lips.

  I dug my fingers into my hair. Right, that was the kicker there. The more I heard about this, the more I knew I couldn't leave Marc to Blodheyr. Nor could I just walk away from the cipher and leave the fae to muddle it out on their own. If Blodheyr was associated with this Lucht Leanúna, then my world was in danger of being taken over by someone who rivaled Sauron.

  "All right, you'd better get me the stuff for the cipher." I sighed. "But once I finish it, I'm done. Out of here. I'm perfectly happy to go back to being the oblivious hobbit who stayed in the Shire while Frodo went on the insane quest."

  David clapped me on the shoulder. "Good. Get out while you can."

  Eliaster and Roe shared a disbelieving look. My smile died, and I curled one hand into a fist. I would get out. I was not going to spend the rest of my life constantly looking over my shoulder like this.

  Roe stood up, pulled a folder from one of the bookshelves, and handed it to me. "This is all we have."

  I opened the folder. It contained a few pages of plain printer paper. "I'll start work on it right away."

  "Please do." Roe pressed her lips together. "I hope you can help us. And my grandson."

  Yeah, you and me both.

  Chapter 8

  David and Roe cleared away the coffee and sandwiches, leaving me room to spread the contents of the folder over the coffee table.

  The cipher document was a half-page of numbers arranged with five numbers to a line, with the end of each number denoted by a period.

  819. 263835. 23790. 690729. 2145.

  23790. 426894. 23790. 312. 263835.

  And so on. Some of the numbers got up into the millions.

  It looked random to me, not a sign of the pattern that Aidan had written about. I scrubbed one hand through my hair. Why had Eliaster and David thought I could do this? For that matter, why had I thought I could do this? I was a math nerd and a hacker, not a cryptologist.

  I dropped the cipher on the table and started in on the report. Within a paragraph I realized two hours of sleep wasn't going to get me through this thing.

  The thing was textbook-dry, just a simple statement of the facts of where the document was found, what state it was in—even the mentions of 'traps' and 'snares' were put in the most boring way possible. Only one thing interested me—a photograph of the stone they'd broken through to excavate the document. It had a series of horizontal and vertical slashes in it. In the margin of the photo, the words 'The wise Keeper knows the fathers of Our Lord the Christ' were written. A translation?

  A snore cut through the gentle crackling of the fire.

  I glanced over at Eliaster. His legs were slung over one arm of his chair, and his head dangled over the other. One arm hung off the chair and the other was tucked up, cradling his swords to his chest like a little kid would cuddle a favorite stuffed animal. He snored again.

  I yawned. That was just cruel. "Eliaster."

  Snoring.

  "Eliaster!"

  More snoring. He shuffled his body so that both arms hung over the seat of the chair. One sword hilt dug into his shoulder.

  I rubbed my eyes and yawned again. He was going to
make me fall asleep before long.

  The door creaked open and David stepped back inside. He made a face at Eliaster, then grabbed a pillow from the couch and threw it across the room. It smacked Eliaster in the face. In a split second the fae was on his feet, one sword half-drawn.

  "Hey!" I curled my feet onto the couch, ready to duck if he started swinging.

  David burst out laughing.

  Eliaster glared at him with red-rimmed eyes.

  "Really?" He grabbed his boots and pounded from the room.

  I snickered. "How does he keep from getting killed if he sleeps that heavily?"

  "He doesn't."

  "Doesn't what?"

  "Doesn't sleep. At least, not much. Seriously, I've never seen him sleep more than an hour, and that never at night. Too paranoid one of the Unseeelie he's ticked off will try to cut his throat." David snuggled into the chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and yawned. "Unlike me, Eliaster can survive on little sleep."

  The door swung open again. Larae hesitated. "Oh, I didn't know you were working already, Josh. I'll leave."

  "No, it's all right."

  She crossed the room, but instead of sitting on the chair that Eliaster had vacated, she flopped down on the floor next to David's chair. "Have you figured the cipher out yet?"

  "He's been working on it for ten minutes, Larae," David muttered.

  She elbowed his leg.

  I rubbed my eyes as I picked up the papers. "And for half of that, I had a snoring fae distracting me. I'm not even sure what kind of cipher this is yet. Marc's dad said they could be recognized by anyone who had taken higher mathematics, but that still leaves a ton of possibilities." I scratched the side of my face. "I read through the report on finding the document. It had this photo with it." I handed her the picture. "Do you know what the scratches in the stone are?"

  She bit her lower lip. "Ogham, looks like. Celtic runes."

  "So the phrase underneath is a translation."

  "I'm not very good with ogham, but that seems to be the likely conclusion." Larae rubbed her earlobe. "The fathers…like, Christ's ancestors?"