Page 3 of The Raven King(The Raven Cycle 4)
As one, the women stopped shuffling, closed their eyes, and held their decks to their hearts, focusing only on each other and the way that their lives were twined together. The candles flickered. Long and short and then long shadows played behind the goddess sculptures. Gwenllian hummed, and after a moment, Jimi did as well.
Only Artemus sat apart, brows furrowed.
But the women included him when they began to lay out the cards. First they braided a row of cards into a solid trunk, whispering positions and meanings to each other as they did. Then they laid out cards in branches that pointed to Artemus, to Jimi, to Orla. And they laid out cards in roots that pointed to Calla, to Maura, to Gwenllian. They knocked heads and laid cards over the top of each other and laughed over their bumbles and gasped over the order of the cards.
Eventually a story appeared. It was about the people they had changed, and the people who’d changed them. The reading included all the juicy bits: when Maura had fallen in love with Artemus; when Jimi had punched Calla; when Orla had secretly drained the common bank account for a business website that had yet to make money; when Blue had run away from home and been dragged home by the cops; when Persephone had died.
The branch that led to Artemus was grim and rotten, littered with swords and fear. The darkness in it led back to the trunk, joining up with something sinister moldering in the root that belonged to Gwenllian. It was obvious that this darkness would be what killed them all if they did nothing, though it was impossible to tell what precisely it was. The women’s clairvoyance had never been able to penetrate the area directly over the ley line, and this darkness was centered there.
The solution to the darkness, however, existed outside of the ley line. It was multifaceted, uncertain, and difficult. The upshot was straightforward, though.
“They’re supposed to work together?” Calla said with disbelief.
“That’s what it says,” Maura said.
Jimi reached for the whiskey bottle, but it was empty. “Can’t we just take care of it ourselves?”
“We’re just people,” Maura replied. “Just ordinary people. They’re special. Adam’s tied to the ley line. Ronan’s a dreamer. Blue amplifies all of that.”
“Richie Rich is just a person,” Orla said.
“Yes, and he’s going to die.”
The women contemplated the spread again.
“Does this mean she’s still alive?” Maura asked, tapping on a card in one of the branches — the Queen of Swords.
“Probably,” Calla grunted.
“Does this mean she’s going to leave?” Orla asked, tapping on another card and referring to a different she.
“Probably,” Maura sighed.
“Does this mean she’s coming back?” Calla demanded, pointing to a third card and meaning a third she.
“Probably,” shrieked Gwenllian, leaping up from the table. She began to spin with her arms in the air.
None of them could sit still any longer. Calla pushed back her chair. “I’m getting another drink.”
Jimi clucked in agreement. “If it’s the end of the world, I might as well, too.”
As the others left the table, Maura remained, looking at Artemus’s poisoned branch of cards and at Artemus himself, hunched behind it. Random men from mystical groves were no longer her type. But still, she remembered loving Artemus, and this Artemus was greatly diminished.
“Artemus?” she asked gently.
He didn’t lift his head.
She touched his chin with a finger; he flinched. She tilted his face up so that they were eye to eye. He had never rushed to fill spaces with words, and he still didn’t. He looked as if he might never speak again, if he could help it.
Since they had both climbed out of the cave, Maura had not asked him about anything that had happened in the years since she’d seen him last. But now she asked, “What happened to you to make you like this?”
He closed his eyes.
Where the hell is Ronan?” Gansey asked, echoing the words that thousands of humans had uttered since mankind developed speech. As he stepped out of the science building, he tipped his head backward, as if Ronan Lynch — dreamer of dreams, fighter of men, skipper of classes — might somehow be flying overhead. He was not. There was only a plane tracing silently through the deep blue above the Aglionby campus. On the other side of the iron fence beside them, the town of Henrietta made productive afternoon business noises. On this side, the students of Aglionby made unproductive afternoon teenage noises. “Was he in Technology?”
Adam Parrish — magician and puzzle, student and logician, man and boy — shuffled his ambitiously laden messenger bag onto his other shoulder. He saw no reason why Gansey would believe Ronan had been anywhere near the campus. It was taking all of Adam’s willpower to focus on Aglionby after the week of magical caves and mysterious sleepers they’d just had, and Adam was the most motivated student there. Ronan, on the other hand, had only shown up to Latin with any regularity, and now that every Latin student had been ignominiously shunted into an extra section of French, what was left for him?
“Was he?” repeated Gansey.
“I thought it was a rhetorical question.”
Gansey looked angry for approximately the length of time it took for a late butterfly to bluster by them in the autumn breeze. “He’s not even trying.”
It had been over one week since they’d retrieved Maura — Blue’s mother — and Artemus — Blue’s … father? — from the cave system. Three days since they had put Roger Malory — Gansey’s ancient British friend — on a plane back to the UK. Two days back at school this week.
Zero days of Ronan attendance.
Was it a foul waste? Yes. Was it entirely Ronan Lynch’s responsibility? Yes.
Behind them, the bell rang noisily in the science building, two minutes after the period had actually ended. It was a proper bell with a proper rope, and it was supposed to be rung properly at the end of the period by a proper student. The two-minute disparity prematurely aged Adam Parrish. He liked it when people knew how to do their jobs.
“Say something,” Gansey said.
“That bell.”
“Everything is terrible,” agreed Gansey.
The two friends stepped off the walk to make the trek across the sports fields. It was a gift, this commute from the science building to Gruber Hall, ten luxurious minutes gulping air and sunshine between classes. Being on campus in general comforted Adam; the predictable routine cradled him. Study hard. Go to class. Hold up your hand. Answer the question. March toward graduation. Other classmates complained about the work. Work! Work was the island Adam swam to in a stormy sea.
And the sea was very stormy. Monsters churned in the ley line beneath them. A forest grew through the hands and eyes Adam had bargained away to Cabeswater. And Gansey was supposed to die before April. That was the troubled ocean — Glendower was the island. To wake him was to get a favor, and that favor would be to save Gansey’s life. This enchanted country needed an enchanted king.
That weekend, Adam had dreamt twice that they had already found Glendower and were now seeking him again. The first night he’d had the dream, it had been a nightmare. The second time, a relief.
He asked carefully, “What’s next for the Glendower search?”
“The Dittley cave,” Gansey said.
This answer startled Adam. Ordinarily Gansey favored the cautious approach, and the Dittley cave was the opposite. For starters, after they pulled Glendower’s daughter Gwenllian out of it, strange animals had begun crawling from the mouth every so often. And for finishers, Piper Greenmantle had shot Jesse Dittley dead at its entrance. Everything about the cave reeked of past and future death. “You don’t think Gwenllian would’ve told us if she thought her father was farther down in that cave, instead of having us wander the cave of bones?”
“I think Gwenllian serves her own purpose,” Gansey replied. “And I have yet to figure out what it might be.”
“I just don’
t think it’s a reasonable risk. Plus, it’s a crime scene.”
If Ronan had been there, he would have said, Everywhere’s a crime scene.
Gansey said, “Does this mean you have different ideas?”
Ideas, plural? Adam would have been happy to have a single idea. The most promising way forward, a cave in Cabeswater, had collapsed during their last excursion, and no new opportunities had appeared to replace it. Gansey had observed that it felt like a test of worthiness, and Adam couldn’t help but agree. Cabeswater had assigned them a trial, they’d set themselves at it, and somehow they’d been found wanting. It had felt so right, though. He and Ronan had worked together to clear the cave of hazards, and then the entire group had pooled their talents to briefly revive the skeletons of an ancient herd that had led Ronan and Blue to Maura. Every night since then, Adam had relived that memory before he went to sleep. Ronan’s dreams, Adam focusing the ley line, Blue amplifying, Gansey speaking the entire plan into motion. Adam had never felt so … intrinsic before. They had been a fine machine.
