The Hunting of the Princes

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Lantic was more of a problem. Nothing Taggie had fitted him, even if she could have convinced him about wearing a girl’s T-shirt. She had to rummage through Mum’s gardening outfits, and use a belt to hold up some worn jeans. The shirt she pulled out of the drawer flapped about like a sail on his skinny chest.

  Jemima thought she’d got away with it, but Taggie insisted she continue to wear her athrodene armour under a dress with a long skirt. ‘Because you can’t cast shielding enchantments like the rest of us,’ Taggie said when her sister moaned. Felix nestled down in a big canvas carryall bag which rested on Taggie’s knees for the short journey.

  ‘This place looks so old,’ Lantic said as the bus chugged along through the usual slow procession of traffic snarling up Stamford’s ancient streets. ‘I thought everything in the Outer Realm was new.’

  Taggie, who never normally paid the town centre much attention, realized that just about every building was stone, with lopsided roofs and walls that bulged in odd places. ‘It’s only new around the edges,’ Taggie said. ‘Some things don’t change, thankfully.’

  ‘So who is Mr Laural?’

  ‘A shopkeeper,’ Taggie explained. ‘A Jannermol who came here from the Fifth Realm originally. They say that was four hundred years ago. He started his shop when more magical folk visited to the Outer Realm. If anyone knows about special secret places around here it’ll be him.’

  ‘What sort of shop is it?’ Lantic asked.

  ‘Delicacies mainly, foodstuff from every Realm. He’s quite famous in that respect, even though there aren’t many magical folk left in the Outer Realm these days. Mum buys things from him.’

  ‘Dad uses the shop as well,’ Jemima chipped in. ‘It’s where they first met.’

  ‘I wonder if Rogreth ever visited him?’ Lantic asked.

  ‘Possibly,’ Taggie said. ‘If he did, Mr Laural will remember. He remembers everything.’

  The bus parked in the big station at the top of Sheep Market. Taggie held the canvas bag carefully as they disembarked.

  ‘It’s so noisy here,’ Lantic said. Cars drove up and down the small hill alongside the bus station, engines revving as they climbed the slope.

  ‘There’s noise everywhere in this Realm,’ Sophie said disapprovingly.

  Taggie walked down to the bottom of Castle Street and started along St Mary’s Street in the middle of the town. The road was narrow and busy, with pavements that weren’t wide enough. Lantic kept flinching at how close the vehicles passed.

  Thankfully they didn’t have to go far. She was looking for Cross Keys Lane, which was so small it was easy to miss. It began in the gap between a quaint Tudor building and the sturdy stone-built Georgian block next door. The Tudor building overhung the entrance, producing a narrow rectangle that looked like a doorway that had no door.

  Taggie turned into the tiny alleyway. The stone walls on either side were dark with age and dirt. After about twenty paces they were past the buildings and the open sky was above them. On her left, the wall had two columns of larger stone blocks set into it, indicating where a doorway used to be centuries ago. Old stonework now sealed off the opening.

  Taggie placed her hand in the middle, and took a furtive look round before speaking the password. There was no one else in the alleyway. ‘Uncross keys.’

  The stones between the door columns turned to phantoms. Taggie quickly stepped through.

  Mr Laural’s shop was a small room with floor-to-ceiling shelves covering every wall that were completely full of jars and clay pots and tins. An oak counter stood at one end, black from age, with balancing scales and a stack of paper bags on top. Lightstones glimmered orange on brackets in each corner, cloaking the shop in a warm twilight glow. The air was heavy with the aroma of fish and spice.

  ‘Mr Laural,’ Taggie called out. Given his age, the shopkeeper spent a lot of time sleeping. ‘Mr Laural, It’s me, Taggie.’ She raised her voice. ‘Mr Laural!’

  Behind the counter, what looked like a four-foot-high egg, with a lot of wispy grey hair, rocked slightly. The top of the shell lifted up, revealing a head with a skin of pale-blue scales below the shell cap. Mr Laural’s flat, lizard-like face kept rising on a thick neck. Then two circles on either side of the shell popped out, revealing themselves to be the top of pincer hands. His arms slid out of the holes like snakes emerging from a nest. Somewhere at the bottom of the shell, Mr Laural’s four legs must have come out, because the whole shell rose up until the top of his head almost touched the ceiling.

  ‘Hello there, young Majesty,’ Mr Laural said pleasantly in his creaky voice. ‘What can I get you and your fine friends this day?’

  ‘I’d like some razormint chocolates, please,’ Taggie said. ‘And half a dozen colcal eggs boiled in raspberry juice.’

  Mr Laural’s wide eyes blinked slowly. ‘An excellent choice, Your Majesty.’ He turned and reached for a big glass jar full of glittering green razormints.

  Jemima tugged at Taggie’s sleeve. ‘Dandol sticks!’

  ‘Oh yes, and some dandol sticks as well, please, Mr Laural.’

  ‘Indeed. And how are you today, dear Blossom Princess?’

  ‘Fine, thank you, Mr Laural.’

  ‘Mr Laural, did my brother, Prince Rogreth from the Second Realm, ever visit your shop?’ Lantic asked in a shaky voice.

  ‘Oh, now let me see,’ Mr Laural said as his rubbery arm slowly wiggled round to take the box of dandol sticks off a low shelf. ‘I do recall the Prince Rogreth. Yes, I do. And you are his brother, you say? Yes. I see the resemblance. He was a most polite young man. I was sorry to hear of his death. My condolences.’

  Lantic sniffed, his eyes started to water. ‘Thank you. What did he buy from you?’

  ‘I believe he selected a carton of jellied antropine seeds. He said you couldn’t get them in the Second Realm, and there was a young lady he wanted to impress.’

  ‘Please may I have a carton of them, as well?’ Lantic said, fighting to hold back tears.

  Taggie put her arm round his shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze.

  Mr Laural began looking round the shelves for jellied antropine seeds, his movements slow and sinuous.

  ‘I have a question, Mr Laural,’ Taggie said. ‘No one knows this area better than you, so I was wondering, is there a safe place for magical folk round here? A secure place that someone who perhaps used dark magic could leave something they held precious for safekeeping?’

  ‘Whatever would you want with such a place?’ Mr Laural asked, his large eyes blinking slowly. ‘You are the Queen of Dreams. I’m sure your mother would be shocked that you asked such a thing.’

  Taggie pushed a gold half-sovereign back across the counter at him, enough to buy six months’ worth of razormint chocolates. ‘Mr Laural, it’s because I’m the Queen of Dreams that I need to know of such a place. I have a duty to keep the peace.’

  ‘Indeed you do, Majesty,’ he said, closing his leathery pincers deftly around the shiny coin. ‘In which case I would suggest the old munitions dump would serve the purpose you describe.’

  ‘What munitions dump?’ Jemima asked.

  ‘During the Outer Realm’s Second World War, a large cavern was excavated under Burghley Park. Originally it was a gnome warren, although they hadn’t used it for over a century, not since King George III ran his not-very-successful campaign to purge them from the land. The British army extended the warren so ammunition could be stored there without fear of it being seen and attacked by enemy planes. A small side passage was dug to it from the main railway tunnel, so trains could load and unload in complete secrecy.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Taggie said.

  ‘It has a tragic history. There were several cave-ins during the excavation, and more than one miner was killed. Outer Realm men claimed it was cursed. It was an unpopular posting. After the war it was abandoned, and the side passage bricked up. But I know it has on occasion proved useful to certain . . . reprobate types who wish to avoid the attent
ion of the sheriffs and Black Garter Knights who seek them.’

  ‘And the entrance is in the train tunnel?’

  ‘Yes, Majesty.’ Mr Laural’s thick pincer hands slid a large paper bag across the surface of the counter. ‘Your provisions, Majesty. I trust they will be satisfactory.’

  ‘Everything we get from your shop is satisfactory, Mr Laural.’

  A TUNNEL INSIDE A TUNNEL

  Taggie emerged back out into the tiny alleyway, squeezing her eyes against the bright sunlight. She led her friends down the slope to the Meadows. Five minutes later they were standing on the eastbound platform of Stamford’s railway station. It was a lovely little station, with the booking office built out of the same mild yellow sandstone as the rest of the town. The waiting room on the other platform was a Victorian wooden cabin with a canopy roof supported by iron pillars. At the end of the platforms an iron footbridge straddled the tracks. Taggie and her friends gathered there, looking along the tracks to the entrance of the tunnel, barely four hundred metres away. It was a simple rectangle at the end of a brick-walled cutting, with two slim, arched road bridges between them and it. A train had just left the station as they arrived. Now there was nobody left on either platform.

  ‘Come on,’ Taggie urged. ‘Before someone sees us.’ She jogged down the ramp at the end of the platform and started along the side of the track. Felix scampered past her, holding his tail horizontal as he always did when he ran. Their feet crunching on the loose-packed stone seemed to make far too much noise inside the high cutting, with every footfall echoing guiltily between the dark-blue brick walls.

  They ran under the first road bridge, then the second. Sophie took her coat off as they reached the tunnel entrance itself, then kicked her oversized boots away. Her wings began to flap, and her feathered feet unfurled. She hovered a few inches above the tracks.

  ‘Oh, that’s better,’ she sighed. ‘Those clothes were like being in chains.’

  Taggie grinned and took her friend’s hat. Sophie’s red hair expanded outward and floated about placidly in the air.

  They were poised on the edge of the shadow cast by the tunnel entrance. Unseen above them, a lorry growled along the road. Taggie realized they were all waiting for her to step inside. With a shrug she started forward again. It would be another hour before the next train. Their schedule was very regular.

  Felix, who had expanded up to waist-height, put on his purple-lens revealor glasses. Lantic noticed him do it, and rummaged round in his satchel for a similar pair. Jemima made a show of putting on hers. Felix did a quick double-take. Jemima’s smug expression halted any comment he might have made.

  Unlike the cutting outside, the tunnel seemed to absorb sound. They moved forward cautiously. Felix held up his paw, and rich yellow light shone out from his ring, casting a pale circle of light. The tunnel entrance shrank away behind them.

  Liquids dripped unseen in the darkness. The air was a lot colder. Lantic shivered, and not entirely from the chill. He made his way over to Felix. ‘I wonder if I might ask you a question?’ he asked quietly. ‘It is a delicate one.’

  Felix’s nose twitched. ‘Bodyguards are fully familiar with discretion, Prince.’

  ‘Uh, right then. Er, do you happen to know if Taggie has a particular boy? One she’s keen on?’

  Felix grew several inches taller. His stare was unnervingly direct. ‘As I said, Prince, bodyguards are discreet. So you can rest assured that is not a question I would ever answer.’

  ‘Ah. Um. Yes. Right, of course,’ Lantic said, backing away, his head bobbing nervously. ‘Thank you.’

  Felix’s little teeth grinned in the tunnel’s gloom. He pulled his revealor glasses back down and examined the filthy brick wall. ‘I think this might be it,’ he announced.

  When Taggie went over to the squirrel she could see the brick was different where his forepaw was indicating. ‘Are there any doorway enchantments?’ Her question seemed to be sucked away by the tunnel air.

  ‘A small one,’ Lantic said. He was peering at the grime-coated wall through his own revealor glasses, his nose mere inches away from the bricks.

  ‘Do you know anything about them?’ Taggie asked. Her method of opening locked doors was mainly blasting them with a destruction spell. She didn’t fancy doing that in the confines of the tunnel.

  ‘Not much,’ Lantic said. ‘And certainly not this one, for I believe this is Karrak wizardry.’ He fumbled for a small notebook and started flicking through. After what seemed an age, he murmured, ‘A-ha,’ and began to wave his hands over the tunnel wall while chanting softly. Green runes glowed faintly within the bricks. Lantic took a couple of steps back and held his fist out. ‘Toraku.’ A gem on one of his rings twinkled a dull purple. Nothing happened. ‘Oh, Heavens be cursed,’ he grumbled, and twisted the gem until it turned aquamarine. ‘Toraku.’ This time a spark leaped out and struck the centre of the glowing runes.

  A circle of bricks clattered loudly to the ground, exposing a black hole behind.

  ‘Wait! I’ve got an illuminious,’ Lantic said, and dived into the satchel again to produce one of his small anamage birds. Blue-white light shone brightly out of its eyes like miniature headlights, and it darted into the opening, revealing a much smaller tunnel beyond.

  Felix drew his sword, which glowed green. Sophie cocked her crossbow and aimed it at the opening. The tip of the bolt glinted with the disturbing violet tinge of bad magic.

  ‘Jemima?’ Taggie said. ‘Is there anything dangerous in there?’

  ‘There’s certainly dark magic present somewhere close,’ Jemima said, staring at the gap in the bricks. ‘But it’s old. I can’t see much else.’

  ‘I’ll go first,’ Taggie said. She spun a tough shield enchantment round herself, then waited until the charmsward bands had aligned correctly for a destruction spell. As ready as she’d ever be, she edged cautiously through the opening.

  Nothing jumped out at her. No guardian spell tried to kill her. ‘Come on through.’

  Ten metres on the other side, a set of rusty railway tracks led away down the tunnel. Somehow the darkness outside the light cast by the illuminious bird seemed deeper. They followed the bird closely, as it flew above the curving rails. Before long, they came to the munitions dump’s tiny station.

  The tunnel widened out to accommodate a slim platform. Old iron trolleys were lined up along the wall, rusting slowly away into oblivion. Red-brown flakes lay around them like puddles of autumn leaves. There was a big archway leading back from the middle of the platform. They all peered round the edge to find a wide corridor whose far end was beyond the beams of light thrown by the illuminious bird. Alcoves on either side opened into the old ammunition storage rooms.

  ‘There’s magic down there,’ Jemima said.

  Felix craned forward. ‘I see none.’

  ‘Let’s be careful,’ Taggie said. With Sophie flying at her side, crossbow held ready, they advanced down the dingy corridor a few paces behind the illuminious bird. The first five ammunition rooms were completely empty. Then Sophie gave the sixth a puzzled look. ‘Look at this.’

  The room had a miniature table and chairs in the middle. Equally small dishes and cups were scattered about. They clearly hadn’t been used for a long time.

  ‘Gnomes,’ Felix declared.

  Taggie shivered, she was glad the horrid creatures had moved on. Gnomes were the one magical folk she couldn’t bring herself to accept. Wicked and malicious, they’d been the first folk of the Realms to ally themselves with the Karraks.

  She kept going.

  ‘There are crates in here,’ Jemima said.

  Taggie risked a quick glance into the storeroom her sister was staring at. She saw some open wooden crates lying about. They were all empty. ‘Nothing there,’ she said. ‘Keep going.’

  ‘Taggie, wait. Those are the same kind I saw being put on the submarine.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not joking. They’re the same.’

 
Taggie cursed under her breath. She didn’t need Jemima’s sight or Felix’s glasses to feel some kind of dark enchantment up ahead, waiting in the gloom. It had to be the dark gate, she was sure of it. ‘Felix, go with her. Take a look at the crates.’

  The squirrel held up his paw so his ring’s golden light shone out, and he accompanied Jemima into the storage room. Taggie moved on.

  At the eleventh door she stopped again. There was an ancient oil drum in the middle of the storeroom, and the light from the illuminious bird glinted on an object resting on top. It glinted gold.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Taggie said eagerly. She took a step towards the door. A huge figure stepped out in front of her. Taggie yelled, half in shock, half in fright. It was a soldier gol, bigger even than those guarding Lady Dirikal. And it was swinging something very large at her.

  She ducked fast, and a heavy sword whistled over her head to clang into the wall, cutting deep into the brickwork. Sophie aimed her crossbow quickly, an excellent shot that sent a bolt slamming into the soldier gol’s elbow joint. The bolt must have caused some damage wedged in there, because the arm didn’t work so well now, slowing down and emitting grinding sounds as it moved.

  That really wasn’t much use, Taggie saw as she scuttled backwards along the ground, because two more soldier gols had appeared behind the first. They must have been waiting in the storeroom, out of sight behind the door.

  Taggie’s arm shot out. ‘Droiak!’

  The red blaze of her destruction spell smacked full into the second gol’s chest. She might just as well have thrown a handful of feathers for all the effect it had. The soldier gol kept on coming.

  Taggie scrambled to her feet. ‘Lantic! What do we do?’

  ‘Er, a counter-charm. Reorder them.’ He started to chant. Two of his rings glowed brightly as the soldier gols lumbered forward. Sophie fired another crossbow bolt. It was perfect shot, jabbing into a knee joint, which started to make the harsh grinding noise, but didn’t slow the thing down much. The gol bent over and tugged the bolt out.