It was a good thing they were holding his arms. The death curse reacted as if the water had been boiling oil. He roared and thrashed. He hit out wildly, forgetting that they were women, forgetting everything he knew. He had swallowed some drops of the water. He was coming back to life and it hurt like flitting, only a thousand times worse. It felt like life itself was killing him. He flung the women off him and plunged towards the door, desperate to get away. He was almost there when his legs suddenly vanished from under him and he went down face-first. His forehead hit the stone floor. He saw stars, and when he was able to open his eyes, he saw a pair of the funny puffy silver boots that came from the Fleet.
His gaze travelled up jeaned legs, over a camouflage jacket, to the pale face of Megumi Smythe.
“I guess I haven’t forgotten everything,” she said with the ghost of a smile, dusting her hands together.
“That was brilliant,” the red-haired woman said. “Remind me to never get on the wrong side of you.”
Hitting his head on the floor had hurt so much that it drove out the other pain. Dizzy, Dhjerga sat up and felt his forehead. They stood around him in a half-circle, two old women and two young ones.
“How are you feeling?” said the pale old woman. She looked, Dhjerga thought, rather like his mother would have, if she’d had a chance to grow old.
He could have said: my head hurts like fuck, but instead he said: “Better.” He tested his arms and legs. They moved normally. He was not dead anymore. He said in amazement, “What did you do?”
“Magic,” the old woman said crisply. She glanced up at the single stained window. The sunlight had gone. And so had Gaethla Moro’s death curse gone from Dhjerga’s heart.
They took him inside the house. The wards no longer stabbed him like a wall of brambles, but welcomed him in. He sat in a steamy kitchen and ate two helpings of everything they gave him, and drank a gallon of coffee, telling them it was the best he’d ever tasted, even though it was just hot water with a trace of flavoring. The pale old woman turned out to be Colm’s mother, the red-headed one was his sister, and the dark one was her mother-in-law.
Dhjerga’s appetite failed as Bridget, the sister, told him everything that had happened. “So they’ve gone to look for the Magus,” she concluded, “but I’m afraid they may’ve gone to the wrong place.”
“The wrong place?” Horror and regret consumed him. While he had lain under Gaethla’s curse, the entire war had flipped like a coin. The Magus would raise a new race of Ghosts from Colm’s son, he thought, and it would never be over. Never.
Colm’s mother turned to Meg, who sat on a hard chair with her arms around her knees like a child. “Show him the picture.”
Meg uncurled one arm and pushed a slim plastic rectangle across the table. Dhjerga looked at it. It showed a man, a woman, and a little girl on one of the Earth contrivances called boats.
“That’s where we think the Magus is hiding,” Meg said.
“I don’t understand.”
“That holo was taken thirty years ago. That’s me and my mother and father, on a sightseeing boat on Loch Ness. They do cruises—I mean, they used to do cruises—where you can go and pretend to spot the Loch Ness Monster.”
“The what?”
“Oh, it’s just a fairy tale. Then again, the faeries turned out to be real, so who knows? But anyway, my parents weren’t interested in Nessie. My dad was a professor of English literature. He specialized in the study of myths, specifically the myths about faeries. My mother was … woo-woo.” Meg twirled a finger at one temple. Her mouth crimped. “But they had this passion in common, and that’s how I ended up celebrating my fifth birthday on a Nessie-hunting boat.”
Dhjerga shook his head in frustration. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, you see, Loch Ness is really deep. And there are rumors that there might be caves down there, which are only accessible from underwater. That’s why the Nessie myth won’t die. But my parents’ thinking was, we know there used to be faeries in Scotland. There are all these stories about them. And if they’re still around, where better for them to hide? … That was before we knew the faeries are real, and they’re just sentrienza.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“So we went out in this boat with sonar imaging equipment, and lo and behold, there really are deep cracks and trenches, which look a lot like the entrances to underwater caves. Well, that’s as far as we took it. Dad published a paper. Nothing came of that, except that people laughed at him. And two decades later, the CHEMICAL MAGE group contacted him to help with their research. But then, the day Nicky w-w-was …”
Abruptly, Meg stopped speaking and put her hands over her face. Her body trembled.
“Daisy,” she cried out, “you did a miracle for Dhjerga. Why can’t there be a miracle for me?”
“I did not do it,” Colm’s mother said. “God did.”
“Oh, fuck it.”
Bridget went over and hugged Meg as she sobbed.
Sighing, Colm’s mother picked up the thread. “Dhjerga, you said that your brother and sister went looking for Scota’s grave.”
“Did I say that?”
“You did. You were talking in your sleep. Maybe it wasn’t true. Is it?”
Dhjerga nodded jerkily. He remembered the last conversation they’d had on Atletis before the twins flitted. It had been an angry one. He’d mocked the twins’ ambition to find their ancestral home. Where were they now? That momentary glimpse of Diejen he’d had in Gaethla Moro’s lair taunted him. He could not sense her or Dryjon at all. That might be because they were not near a power source. Or it might be because … His mind shied from the other alternative.
Huskily, he said, “They thought Scota’s grave was at a place called the Ridge of the Bridge. I don’t know where that is. Maybe Gaethla knew; he might have told Diejen …”
“The Ridge of the Bridge,” Colm’s mother nodded. “You said that in your sleep, too. And I know where it is. It’s where I used to live myself. It’s a town called Drumnadrochit.”
“Which happens to be right next to Loch Ness!” Meg said. Her eyes were wet and her nose red, but her voice was once more steady. “So, putting it all together, we think there really are caves under Loch Ness … or something. And that’s where the Magus has taken Nicky. He’s taken him home.”
*
“But I can’t help you,” Dhjerga said. He felt weak again. It was dark and a wet wind blew over the hill. He followed Meg back into the church. She gave him an electric torch to hold while she rooted around in the piles of useful things Colm had left behind. “I’ve lost my magic.”
The death curse had gone, but it had left him damaged. He could not flit. One had heard of this. He was as weak as any slave.
“That’s OK,” Meg said, backing into the light. She lugged a jerrycan that looked heavy. “Here’s some gasoline. Axel took the boat, damn him—but we’ve also got a dinghy with an outboard motor. It’ll get us to the mainland.”
“Axel?” Dhjerga realized he had not seen the brave Marine in the house. “Where’s he gone?”
“Who knows? He walked off, as usual. He’s probably gone to kill himself,” she said with dreadful flippancy. “But you know what?” She unwrapped a tarpaulined object. “This, my Ghost friend, is a Gauss gun. 12,000 rounds per minute, and it’s lighter than an AK clone.” She flashed a grin. “Who needs a man, when I’ve got this?”
Lioness, she-wolf, warrior—Meg, Dhjerga decided, was the most terrifying of all the women in this clan. And he was going to be journeying with her to face the Magus, on foot, unaided.
He could have had worse company.
*
They packed their rucksacks first thing in the morning. Dhjerga sighed gloomily as he hefted his pack crammed with food, ammunition, and camping equipment. There was another Gauss gun for him, which added more weight. He was used to travelling light, with nothing but the clothes he stood up in—you could always fetch more stuff later. But n
ow he could not fetch anything, and he had to travel inch by inch, like a slave.
They hauled the dinghy to shore and got in. The outboard engine sputtered into life. The Mackenzies and Wilsons waved from the beach. The prow bounced over small waves. Meg, at the tiller, turned the boat towards the mainland. “I figure we’ll put in at the ferry port at Kyle of Lochalsh,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
Dhjerga shrugged. “The same.”
“I meant does your head hurt?”
“Oh. A little.”
Meg felt in the pocket of her jacket. “I brought these for you,” she said, taking out a handful of blister packs.
“That looks like the stuff Colm used to take.”
“It is. Tropodolfin.”
“It was killing him,” Dhjerga said bluntly. Would he ever see Colm again? He and Meg might be heading to the wrong place. The Magus might have flung the child halfway across the galaxy, to some secret hiding place he’d discovered, just as he had discovered Kisperet so long ago. Colm and his father might have—no, almost certainly had—flitted into a trap. And Dhjerga, crippled, could not save them.
But maybe he could still save the twins.
He put the sheets of white pills into his pocket, and gazed across the waves, towards the land his people had come from thousands of years ago.
CHAPTER 45
THE SHIHOKA SWUNG PAST apogee and began to fall back towards the heimdall. The little artificial world on the screen drew incrementally closer.
“No more time to waste. I’m going in,” Colm said. Nicky was somewhere down there. Get in, grab him, get out.
But there was a problem. Once he flitted away from the Shihoka, he wouldn’t be able to get back. Because once he left the ship, he’d lose touch with the instruments that allowed him to sense and flit to fast-moving power sources. Catch twenty-fucking-two.
“Dad, you’ll have to take the ship into the zero-gravity field.” His heart sank. Initiating the zero-gravity field generators was a complicated operation. To make matters worse, the ship would need to burn further away from the star to reach the zero-gravity point. So Lloyd would need to start the antiquark field generator, go through all the steps of ramping up the output, plot a course to the zero-gravity point, and enter the field—that’s if he didn’t get wasted as soon as he throttled up the drive and the sentrienza saw him …
Lloyd regarded the acres of buttons, dials and screens in front of the couch with distaste. “Save your breath. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
“You said it,” Colm sighed.
“I’ll fetch the child. I know him better than you do, anyway.”
Lloyd stooped and called for Mickle. He coaxed the small tabby into the pocket of his duster, which made it hang down lopsidedly.
“Dad, no. This is my job.”
“Your job is to fly this ship. Put it where I can reach it again.” Lloyd petted the cat, whose head stuck out of his pocket. In his other hand, a pair of spoons had appeared. They rattled out a cheery rhythm, bouncing off the back of the couch and off Colm’s head.
“Ow!”
“Now you see me …” Lloyd vanished. “Now you don’t.” His voice stayed behind, a sibilant echo.
Colm was alone in the cockpit.
He groaned, and swept a hand over the switches, enabling the antiquark field generator. It killed him to be left behind like this. Now he knew how his parents must have felt when he ran away to space.
Throttle up.
The Shihoka’s powerful drive roared to life, hurling the little ship out of orbit. Colm had calculated the shortest trajectory to the system’s zero-gravity point. It would take him past several more of these heimdalls. They orbited at all inclinations, not just in the plane of the ecliptic, and they undoubtedly hosted powerful weapons systems. If that rocky little world was Elphame, it was the best-defended planet in the galaxy … and by lighting up his drive, Colm had just alerted the sentrienza to the presence of an intruder in their midst.
His nose prickled with an esthesia alert, a bad smell, like dogs fresh from rolling in the mud.
Hostile craft approaching.
Well, that didn’t take long.
He opened the throttle. This was a fighter. Maybe he could outrun them to the zero-gravity point. Acceleration pressed him back into the couch, giving a sense of speed that the blackness outside did not provide. The heimdall shrank into space, but the hostiles gained on him, and with his radar and infrared eyes he watched them swoop out of space. Spiky wings spread, they scrambled through the vacuum in a formation that changed shape by the moment. A murmuration of Walking Guns.
In half a human heartbeat, they surrounded the ship and landed on the hull like a hundred little airplanes touching down on curved runways. Colm felt their sharp legs digging into his skin. It was like ants crawling all over his body, biting and pinching. They chewed his sensor arrays, spat junk data into his radio and radar antennas. His composite vision got patchy. He screamed, clawing at his eyes. With his left hand he reached for his Nessie mug—
—and flitted—
—and thumped back into space on the far side of the system, 2 AUs out, with the Walking Guns still clinging to him! Another heimdall filled his single functioning screen. Click-clacking black legs obscured its orb. The smell of wet dog choked his nostrils. More Walking Guns scuttled up from their various orbits around the heimdall, converging on him, as if they’d been lying in wait. Come to think of it, they probably had been. He’d blundered into a living, semi-sentient minefield several AUs wide, and he could not escape, because the only power sources were these fucking heimdalls, so he was never going to reach a usable zero-gravity point by flitting, not without being eaten alive. He sobbed curses, and flitted again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
*
Lloyd grunted in pain as his boots thumped down on lush, damp grass. Jesus, that hurt! Before today he had not flitted in donkey’s years. It was good to know he could do it without the booze. But where the hell was he?
Looked—and smelled—like a tropical paradise. He had never been big on travel, but he and Daisy had spent their honeymoon in Bali, and the dripping greenery and gaudy flowers reminded him of that.
He grabbed for Mickle as she escaped from his pocket and chased a fluttering butterfly. “Here, kitty, kitty!” He blundered after her through the trees, getting eyefuls of water from cup-shaped flowers. “Mickle!” His familiar, his precious. With her at hand, he didn’t need the booze. It had been a long time after Sprite before he could even think about getting another cat, and it had surprised him how quickly he came to love her. And depend on her. They had to stay together to have any chance of getting out of here alive.
She caught the butterfly.
It had eight wings.
“Christ, don’t eat that,” Lloyd said. He glanced around and muttered aloud. “Where the hell is this?”
At the foot of a nearby tree sat a furry pale green octopus, reading a book. “Shangri-la,” it said.
“More like Alice in fucking Wonderland,” Lloyd said.
Another tentacle held a cigarette. The octopus languidly exhaled smoke from its beak. “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan,” the octopus declaimed, “a stately pleasure-dome decree … There is no dome here, but the principle’s the same.”
“Yeah, yeah. Would you have another fag on you?”
“In Shangri-la,” the octopus said, “or Xanadu, which are both synonyms for the Land of Eternal Life, cigarettes cost the earth.”
“Dammit,” Lloyd said. He wandered on, carrying Mickle, until he came out of the trees onto a beach.
A broad expanse of pristine sand stretched for miles and miles. Sparkling swell sluiced over and through a breakwater of half-submerged black rocks a few yards offshore. Breaking on the beach, the waves looked too foamy, as if the water were mixed with washing-up liquid. Maybe this was the place people once called Faerieland—or a Faerieland. The Faerieland of the furry gr
een octopi.
About half a mile away, a peculiar rock stood on the beach. Lloyd mooched towards it with his hands in his pockets, one thumb stroking Mickle’s fur. When he got close to the rock he stopped. It was ten feet high, gleaming like wet basalt, shaped like a sagging pyramid. When Lloyd closed one eye and turned his head sideways, so that the rock barely flickered in his peripheral vision, it looked like an enormous man sitting on his haunches, clothed in shadow.
“We meet at last,” Lloyd said. He was shaking with fear and trying to hide it. “Where’s my grandson?”
“Go home, Mackenzie,” whispered the Magus. “It’s over.”
“It’s not over till it’s over. Where’s the child?”
The Magus heaved towards him, squat-walking, kicking out his legs like beams, leaving a six-foot-wide snail trail in the sand. Lloyd involuntarily staggered back, feeling that the Magus was about to fall on him, crushing him. The Magus halted, leaning over him. “There.”
Now the rock was no longer blocking Lloyd’s view, he saw Nicky sitting on his bottom, wearing nothing but a nappy, digging in the wet sand near the waterline. His heart skipped a beat. “Nicky!” he shouted. “I’ve come to take you home! Come here to me …”
The Magus surged to his feet. The edge of his shadow rose off those horrible huge leather boots. He was still swathed in darkness, so Lloyd could not get a proper look at him, but he stood at least nine feet high. Fear chilled Lloyd’s soul. They say that in the old days, men were giants …
“Go home.” The words battered at Lloyd like a cold gale, raising gooseflesh on his skin, although he still stood in sunlight. “Go home, go home! Or stay—and pay …”
Lloyd frantically searched his pockets. Cards, coins, a silk handkerchief … That might work. He whipped it out and turned it into a seagull. It was only a trick, really. There were electrical conduits running under the beach and through that breakwater out there—power to spare. He just grabbed some of it, the same way he used to leech off the wiring in homes and theaters when performing for a crowd, and fetched a seagull from Skye, where there were loads of them. Chuck the handkerchief away and Bob’s your uncle. You just had to be careful where ‘away’ was. He and Daisy had messed up their Vanishing Lady act once, thirty years ago, before the kids were born. Daisy was supposed to reappear in the middle of the audience, but she wound up in the parking lot, shivering in her spangly bikini. That had happened because he’d been drinking, of course. He should have been more careful. Shouldn’t have drawn attention to them … to Colm. But now it was too late. His hubris had brought agony to his son and destruction to Earth, so Lloyd no longer gave a shit, and his seagull landed on the Magus’s head and had a good go at pecking his eyes out before the Magus tore its head off and flung both halves into the ocean. Blood droplets fell onto the sand.
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