"Are you coming?" Ariana nodded to Samuel, who took point again out the door, following the fairy queen.
Ariana went next, and I waved my hand for Gabriel and Jesse to precede me.
I took a deep breath, the kind that cleared your mind and lungs before some extreme endeavor--and smelled earth and growing things in this cold marble room.
Only the fairy queen's glamour would work in her Elphame, Zee had said.
I paid attention to my nose as we walked down the hall in the wake of the fairy queen.
Question, I thought, as I tried to sniff out the scents that were real from the ones produced by the queen's illusions.
If it looks like a hallway, feels like a hallway, and acts like a hallway--is it important to figure out that it isn't a hallway? But curiosity is very nearly my besetting sin.
Gradually, as we walked, the scent of dirt, of the sap of wounded wood, and of something that might have been sorrow grew.
I glanced up at the dangling lights and saw tree roots instead of silver wires, and shining rocks instead of gemstones, rocks much like the one Zee had given Ariana.
I blinked, and the gems were back, but I didn't believe in them anymore, and they wavered.
I stumbled and looked down, momentarily seeing a root sticking up from a soft dirt floor, then my vision changed and the tiny white tiles, laid flat and even with nothing to trip over, were back.
"Mercy?" Jesse asked.
"Are you all right?" The queen looked back at me, and her face--though still beautiful--was different from the woman she'd been just a few minutes ago.
It was elongated from chin to forehead, and her eyelashes were longer than humanly possible without glue and fake eyelashes.
Narrow, clear wings, like a damselfly's, poked up from her shoulders.
They were too small to lift her body off the ground without magic.
"Fine," I said.
The long silver gown the queen had been wearing was real enough, but there were dark brown stains that might have been old blood on the hem and near her wrists.
The necklace she wore, which had looked like a silver-and-diamond waterfall, was of tarnished black metal, and the set stones were uncut.
My first sight of the great hall she led us to was jaw-dropping, if only for ostentatiousness.
The floors were white marble shot with gray and silver, and pillars of green jade rose gracefully to support an arching ceiling that would not have looked out of place at the Notre Dame Cathedral.
Silver trees with jade leaves grew out of the marble floor and shivered, disturbed by a wind I could not feel.
When the leaves knocked together, they chimed musically.
Graceful benches carved out of pale and dark woods, like a wooden chess set, were placed artfully around the room, occupied by lovely women and beautiful men, who all looked at us when we entered the room.
At the far side of the hall there was a raised dais with a silver throne, delicately made and decorated with gems of green and red, each as big as my hand.
Curled up next to the chair was a cat that looked like a small cheetah until it lifted its head, displaying huge ears.
Serval, I thought, or something that looked a lot like the medium-sized African hunting cat.
But I didn't smell a cat: the whole room smelled of rotting wood and dying things.
And then the room I was walking through wasn't a room at all.
I didn't think there were any naturally occurring caves in this area.