“No.” Frieda shook her head. It was impossible to predict the future, certainly in any great detail. And yet… if it was impossible, why was it illegal? She’d heard of noblewomen being executed for trying to predict when the king would die… why insist on the death penalty, if they were wasting their time? It was something to discuss with Emily, when they saw each other again. “I make my own future.”
Granny smiled. “They all say that, young lady.”
“Really.” Frieda finished her drink, grimacing slightly at the taste. It had been a long time since she’d drunk bark tea and she’d forgotten how sour it could be, if one wasn’t used to the flavour. She didn’t want to know what Granny had put in the water, before bringing it to the boil and leaving it to simmer. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll be on my way.”
“They disturbed something very dangerous,” Granny said, her tone so serious Frieda found herself unable to look away. “Something best left buried under the ground, away from human eyes. You’ve felt it, haven’t you? The sense that the thing you found should be left firmly alone.”
Frieda’s eyes hardened. “Do you know what it is?”
“No,” Granny said. “But I do know it’s dangerous. Your friends aren’t the only people to have gone missing over the last few months. They can feel it, down in the village. They’re closing their doors at night, praying to all the old gods that whatever’s been unleashed doesn’t come for them. You need to warn your friends. It has to be buried again, and quickly.”
“I can try,” Frieda said. “What do you know about it? Why was it even found?”
“The ground shifted, from what I was told,” Granny said. “It was spat out. Or, perhaps, it grew out of the earth and thrust itself into the light. And now it is poisoning the land. I can feel it, a poisonous needle thrust into the earth.”
Frieda shivered. “Did it destroy the village, so long ago?”
“It might.” Granny shrugged, her voice suddenly urgent. “Tell your friends. Tell them to bury it beneath the soil and forget they ever saw it. And quickly.”
“I can try,” Frieda repeated. She doubted the diggers would listen, even Hoban. It was hardly their first dangerous dig. She even understood their attitude. The artefact might be dangerous to the unwary, but they… they were trained and experienced archaeologists who knew to be careful. They might not realise they’d run into something they couldn’t handle until it was far too late. “But…”
She stood, brushing down her tunic. They might not have run into something they couldn’t handle. Hoban would certainly think so, she was sure, and she hoped to all the gods he was right. And yet, all her instincts were screaming Granny was right. The artefact really was dangerous. They’d be safer playing catch with a necromancer.
“You will be welcome, if you come back here,” Granny said. “Until then…”
Frieda nodded, recognising the dismissal. “I’ll do my best,” she promised. Hoban would give her a fair hearing, at least. He’d certainly never dismissed her because of an accident of birth. “And we’ll see.”
But she feared, even as she spoke, that the diggers wouldn’t listen.
Chapter 4
“We need to know what it is,” Hoban said, when she returned to the site and told them about Granny’s warning. “And quickly, in case there are more of them.”
Frieda scowled. She understood his logic. The artefact, whatever it was, hadn’t come out of nowhere. Someone — or something—had made it. There were enough horror stories about things left behind after the Faerie Wars for her to be very aware of the dangers, of the need to know what was there even if the artefacts were buried and the site sealed off for the rest of eternity. Hell, she’d seen the Dark City and the wastelands near Mountaintop. And yet, the more she thought about it, the more she was sure they were making a terrible mistake.
Hoban leaned forward and kissed her, lightly. “We can handle it,” he said. “We know what we’re doing.”
“Perhaps we should call Emily,” Frieda said. “Or someone…”
Her boyfriend shook his head. “Lady Emily is not a trained archaeologist,” he said, curtly. It took Frieda a moment to realise she’d inadvertently insulted him. “And besides, isn’t she fighting a war?”
Frieda kicked herself, mentally. She’d seen Emily at her best. Hoban had only seen her at her worst, when she’d come very close to being broken by King Randor’s final curse. She had not taken it well. Frieda sighed as Hoban turned away, to return to the dig, She couldn’t blame Emily for reacting badly to the curse and yet… she ground her teeth in bitter frustration. They needed help.
The thought mocked her as the hours slowly turned into days. The digging team grumbled and grumbled and did as little as they could get away with, despite a mixture of promise and threats, but they slowly dug out more of the artefact. Frieda thought, as she studied the object, that her early thoughts about icebergs had been more accurate than she’d realised at the time. The artefact did look like the tip of an iceberg, although it was still hard to get a good look at it. Her eyes kept skipping over the artefact, leaving her with the impression it was both smooth and oily and yet angular and hard. She wondered, as she paced the edge of the dig and supervised the workers, if her own preconceptions were colouring her impressions. Frieda was no expert on subtle magic, and the team knew to watch for it; but she knew the basics. The runes tended to work better when they were encouraging someone to believe what they wanted to believe. It was easy to think one might be right, harder to admit one might be wrong.
Her sense of unease grew stronger as incidents started to mount up. One worker went mad, running around screaming his head off until she stunned him… and then, when he recovered, had no memory of the incident at all. Another fell asleep when he was supposed to be working, nearly falling into the pit as he hit the ground. Frieda thought someone had hit him with a sleep spell, perhaps someone lurking in the undergrowth, but there was no trace of any magic on his person. Two more simply downed tools and walked away from the artefact, as if they thought it was the end of the working day. They didn’t stop, or respond to orders or shouts, until they crossed the boundary line on the edge of the ruined village.
She watched, more concerned than she cared to admit. She’d been told, as a child, that the ruined village was haunted, that no man entered the blackened wasteland and returned with his life. It belonged to the Awful Folk now and… she didn’t believe it. No, she didn’t want to believe it. And yet, there were things flickering at the corner of her eye, shapes moving within the forest as night crept over the land, whispers echoing at the edge of her awareness… she knew she was brave. She knew she could handle anything, and if she couldn’t, she knew she could make it feel it had been in a fight; yet she wanted to turn and run. She hadn’t felt so scared since the first time the lads had cornered her, when she’d started to grow into a young woman…
Her eyes narrowed. No, it wasn’t like that. It was… something else, a deep gnawing fear that didn’t seem to have a cause. There were no visible threats, save for the artefact and it didn’t seem to be doing anything, yet she was scared. Very scared. The sense of being watched waxed with nightfall and waned with sunrise, yet never faded completely. She could feel unseen eyes on her, but… she could never see them.