you. And in any case, you must have plenty of other things to do than look after one rather doddery old man. Where were you off to when we met?”
Worried about all he’d been through already, I started to deflect the question, then realized I was doing him a disservice. Without his spectacles, he looked fragile and unfocused, but his mind was still as sharp as ever, and his spirit as curious. So I told him not only that I’d been looking for Sybil but why.
“Scrying? How fascinating, my dear.” A bit of color came into his cheeks. Magic had always excited him. “I remember you mentioning that you had done something of the sort before, but I’m afraid I know very little about how it works. What kind of pictures did you see, exactly—if you don’t mind my asking?”
I didn’t mind at all. In fact, it was possible that Penebrygg would be able to cast some light on them. Although he didn’t have Sybil’s deep knowledge of Chantress magic, he was a keen researcher and reader, and his interest in magic meant that over his long lifetime he’d consulted all kinds of rare books—some of which no longer existed, having been burned in Scargrave’s time. I sat down on a bench by the fire and carefully described what I’d seen, hoping he might have a clue as to what it all meant. For good measure, I told him about Melisande, too—about her necklace, and what she’d said about a wall and the Mothers.
“And now here you are seeing a wall with a hole in it, and a green light on the other side.” Penebrygg stroked his beard, something he did only when troubled. “I wonder . . . could it be the wall between the worlds?”
“The what?”
“Didn’t I once tell you about it? Years ago it would be, back when we first met, when you asked me what I knew about Chantresses. It’s how your kind came about, you see. So the old stories say. I’ve heard a few different versions, but it boils down to this: There is—or was—a wall between the faerie world and ours, and both we and they used to cross it now and again, and to mingle. And those men who took faerie wives had Chantress daughters.”
If he had said something about this, I’d forgotten it in my rush to understand more about the threat posed by Scargrave and his Shadowgrims.
I said slowly, “The old stories? You mean it’s only a legend?”
“A legend, yes. But that doesn’t mean there’s no truth in it, my dear.”
My godmother had warned me that Penebrygg’s stories about Chantresses weren’t necessarily to be believed, and she herself had never mentioned any kind of wall. Still, I was curious. “You say people used to cross it? They don’t anymore?”
“So the stories go. Something sealed us off from each other; I’ve never heard anything about how or when or why. From what you say, I gather Melisande believes it was Chantress magic of some sort, though why Chantresses would want to cut themselves off from the faerie world, I don’t know. I seem to remember reading once that Chantresses used to cross the wall to renew their powers. Apparently visiting that world strengthened them, though, it was said that they had to be careful never to take their stones off while they were there, or terrible things could befall them.”
I couldn’t help shaking my head. I’d never heard of such a thing before—not from Lady Helaine, not from anyone else.
“Well, all that’s by the by,” Penebrygg said. “My point is this: I wonder if what we are dealing with now is a hole in the wall—and some kind of terrible magic from the other side. You said the light coming from the hole was green?”
“Yes.”
“In the old stories, green is the color of the faeries. Who, it is also said, can be held off with iron.”
“But it’s not faeries we’re seeing,” I objected. “It’s sea serpents and kraken.”
“For all we know, that’s what they look like.” Penebrygg stretched his hands toward the blue-orange flames of the fire. “The trouble is, you’re thinking of faeries as tiny winged creatures who dance around the woods. But that isn’t what they are at all. You should think of them instead as masters of illusion. The old stories say the creatures of faerie can be anything they want to be.”
I thought of the moment when I’d seen two kings. Maybe there was something in what