The Iron Seer

Chapter 10 - Iron and Fire

"What are we going to do?" I asked Ash.

I knew he already had a plan by the dark light in his eyes when he turned to me. "We're going to collapse the caves," he said, "and seal them in."

It had been two nights, and I was still mapping the tunnels we needed to collapse. All of the exits out of the mountain were to be sealed in - Ash and I would use our glamour to force ice into cracks and fissures in the stone, breaking it apart until the ceilings caved in.

Everything about this plan made me sick, but what else could I do? The Oni were forging iron weapons for war, and Glassbarrow might be in danger. We couldn't allow those weapons to leave that mountain, and Ash said that meant we couldn't allow the Oni to live.

The closer we got to executing the plan, the more I felt as if what we were doing was wrong. Even though I didn't want the Oni to attack anybody, especially the residents of Glassbarrow, and I knew that the iron weapons couldn't be allowed into the realm, I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe there was some way to get out of this without committing genocide.

I didn't know what it was yet, but I knew that I would find a way.

I was angry at Ash for being so infuriatingly calm about killing. The way he could talk so easily about murdering this tribe of Oni scared me. And I couldn't see what he was feeling or thinking. His mask was so convincing that I wondered at times whether he felt anything at all.

I understood, of course. Ash had grown up in the heart of the Winter Court, where killing was not only acceptable but encouraged if it was done on behalf of Mab. In his mind, this would be the right thing to do, to prevent future bloodshed. This was justice.

Except that it wasn't right.

Now, as I traveled back to our new camp from my day of mapping tunnels, I hummed a little snatch of song quietly to myself as I walked. I went over the argument in my head, about how I would convince him not to go through with this plan. I was feeling gloomy, and the song gave me something to concentrate on that wasn't death and visions and cold Unseelie princes.

Then I realized that the song was one that Ash and I had danced to at Elysium, and I stopped immediately, at the same moment that a blue light flashed at the corner of my vision.

***

I froze, wondering if I had imagined it. For a few tense seconds, I waited, and it beckoned again. Slowly, I turned toward it, and it darted around the corner, just out of sight, luring me to follow.

Every survival instinct told me not to listen, but there was some deeper voice, from the place at my core, that was telling me to go forward and follow it.

I took a step, and then another, and the glow bobbed ahead of me. A will-o'-the-wisp? I couldn't be sure, not without seeing it. Meanwhile, a bright amber light - the light from my dream, I realized - grew all around until it was so bright it burned my eyes.

Then I turned the corner into a cave, shielding my eyes from the intensity of the light. The source was just before me, a great burning shape -

A fire elemental gazed at me with eyes like hot red coals.

***

"Seer," it said in a voice like crackling flames. "I've waited a long time to speak with you."

"Excuse me?" I stared, gaping, at the figure, squinting and blinking rapidly to bring it into focus, but all I could see were the burning eyes and the haloed profile, in a large, roughly humanoid shape.

The fire elemental let out a puff of smoke. "The spirits of the Nevernever whisper your name. Yours is an important role, the one that all the others hinges on."