And now, if his guess was correct, they were about to get it back.
He used his portakey to kill the securities – they’d proved useless anyway – and stepped warily through the gap. He was sure the creature had escaped – Nymph had told him it had escaped – but there was still a deeply ingrained part of his mind that warned him to be careful. The manticore was intelligent: he constantly reminded himself there were faerie genes in there along with lion and scorpion. She was quite capable of faking a breakout as bait for a trap. But as he peered around, there was no sign of the beast and few places where she might be hiding. To his right, half hidden by a pillar, was the creature’s feeding table with a wooden bowl of half-chewed leaves. Pyrgus frowned, then went across and sniffed.
The smell confirmed his suspicions at once. The leaves were St John’s wort, a mild euphoric for a human, a strong ecstatic for a faerie, but a berserker hit for a Haleklind creation like a manticore. No wonder she had found the strength to smash through the wall. Who fed her the wort? Not Nymph, a Forest Faerie skilled in herbal lore; not any of the sanctuary staff, who had strict instructions about the diets of their charges; not any of the vineyard workers, most of whom avoided the sanctuary like the plague; and certainly not Pyrgus himself.
He pushed the puzzle aside. The fact was he had a maddened manticore on the loose and a sinking feeling about exactly where she might he headed.
Pyrgus climbed back through the gap and almost bumped into Nymph.
‘Definitely gone?’ she asked, frowning.
He nodded. ‘Yes. Some idiot fed her John’s wort.’
‘Bloody Hael!’ She hesitated. ‘You don’t think…?’
‘I think she might. And can’t say I blame her after what those bastards did.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Make sure, for a start.’ He leaned over impulsively and gave her a kiss on the cheek. ‘Do we have any glowdust left?’
‘I’m ahead of you,’ Nymph said. She handed him a small packet. ‘Go easy with it. There’s more on order, but that’s the last we have until the shipment comes.’
‘Thanks,’ Pyrgus murmured. He slit the packet with his thumbnail, squeezed and blew. The dust fanned out in a stream, ignoring both Pyrgus and Nymph, and began to glow almost immediately. Then it settled to leave a trail of luminous manticore padprints leading from the ruined wall towards the copse across the field. They set off to follow it together, quickly breaking into a panicky run.
‘Where do you think she’s heading?’ Nymph asked. She seemed to be able to avoid obstacles by instinct, for she never took her eyes off the trail.
Pyrgus, who found himself struggling to keep up, said breathlessly, ‘Haleklind for sure.’ He slowed slightly and Nymph slowed with him. ‘She was created in Haleklind. You might say that was her birthplace.’
‘Maybe she just thinks she’s going home,’ Nymph suggested. ‘You know, to live in a forest or something.’
But Pyrgus shook his head firmly. ‘No such luck. This is trouble, Nymph. Big trouble.’
The vineyard’s southernmost fencing marked almost four miles of the border with Haleklind. From one point it was actually possible to see the towers and checkpoints of an official crossing post. Outside of such posts, the wizards maintained the integrity of their borders with magical protections – usually force fields – the most extensive and sophisticated in the known world. Indigenous wildlife could cross and recross without hindrance. Anything else was repulsed. The force fields extended deep beneath the earth and high above the skies of Haleklind. Without the necessary papers, nothing could enter the wizards’ country.
Nymph and Pyrgus trotted through the copse, then stood side by side staring at the point where the manticore’s luminous trail crossed the final limits of their estate. The high fencing was smashed as if it were matchwood, little problem for a creature that had burst through a solid wall. The trail continued deep into Haleklind, passing through the invisible force field as if it did not exist.
‘The spell must have categorised her as wildlife,’ Nymph murmured with a trace of awe in her voice.
But Pyrgus shook his head. ‘She was made over there,’ he said. ‘All the component parts are Halek. As far as the spell is concerned, she’s practically a native. ’
They continued to stare gloomily for a moment. As the glow of the trail began to fade, Nymph said, ‘What are we going to do?’
‘I’ll have to go to Haleklind.’
‘We’ll both go,’ Nymph said at once.
‘There isn’t time to arrange your documentation,’ Pyrgus told her. ‘As a Prince of the Realm, I have automatic entry.’ It was one of the few perks of royal birth, maintained even after his abdication. ‘Besides, one of us has to stay here to run the place.’
The marvellous thing about Nymph was she never argued about the inevitable. Still staring at the vanishing trail, she said, ‘Do you think she can find the laboratory?’
‘Given time,’ Pyrgus said grimly. ‘They’re amazing creatures.’
‘How much time?’
‘Hard to say. I’m hoping I can head her off.’
Nymph licked her lips. ‘If you can’t, are you going to warn them?’
‘I don’t know,’ Pyrgus told her honestly. ‘There’s part of me thinks they deserve anything they get.’
‘But the manticore might be killed. Or hurt.’
‘The manticore certainly will be killed. That’s a given. But not before she takes a few of her old tormentors with her.’
‘You can’t let her die,’ Nymph said. ‘Not like that. You’re going to have to head her off and bring her back.’
‘If I can find her,’ Pyrgus said.
Twenty-Two
‘Look what you’ve done!’ Aisling squealed furiously.
Mella opened her eyes and stood up. She felt groggy, but something seemed to have burned most of the drug effects out of her system. Aunt Aisling was waving the portal control under her nose; or what was left of the portal control. Half of it seemed to be missing. What remained was trailing wires with bits of electrical gear attached. The thing was broken beyond repair.
‘Where are we?’ Mella asked.
‘How are we going to get back?’ Aisling demanded.
Mella looked around. They were standing halfway up a narrow, twisting, wooden staircase in some gloomy place with wooden – or wood-panelled – walls. The stairs were so steep that they almost formed a sheer drop, yet there was no balustrade on either side. In its place was a thick length of knotted rope hanging down from a distant ceiling.
‘Where are we?’ Aisling asked Mella crossly, as if Mella hadn’t just asked her the same thing. She looked at the control in her hand. ‘This stupid thing blew up. Did you hear the explosion? Why did you tell me to press the button?’
‘I don’t know where we are,’ Mella said. Her mind was still woolly from the tea, but not that woolly. They’d obviously passed through a portal: it was the only thing that made sense. So they were presumably back in the Faerie Realm. But where in the Faerie Realm she had no idea.
‘You must know where we are,’ Aisling insisted. ‘You knew how to work the control!’
The woman was her aunt, but it was like dealing with a petulant child. ‘Keep your voice down,’ Mella told her urgently. Until she found out where they’d ended up, it would be as well not to draw attention to themselves. Not everywhere in the Faerie Realm was friendly.
‘I will not keep my voice down!’ Aisling snapped furiously; but at least she snapped it in a whisper. Mella suddenly realised her aunt was frightened.
‘It’s best you don’t talk at all,’ Mella said quietly, but very firmly. She looked around again. There was no one else on the staircase, no one at the bottom so far as she could see, and no sound of other voices. ‘Now listen. Where the portal takes you depends on how the control was set. Did you do anything except press the button?’
Aisling shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Then it’
s taken us to wherever it was last set for.’ She took a deep breath and asked something she’d wanted to ask much earlier. ‘Where did you get the control?’ She knew from her father’s journal that Aunt Aisling had never been to the Faerie Realm, didn’t even know about it, especially didn’t know that Henry went there. And her aunt absolutely loathed Mr Fogarty, so it was very unlikely she’d got the portal control from him.
Aisling hesitated. Eventually she said, ‘It’s your father’s.’
‘Yes, but how did you get it? Did he give it to you?’
This time the hesitation was even longer. ‘No, I found it in his room. He’d hidden it in a drawer under some of those magazines boys read for the pictures. I thought it might be for the television set. I mean, it looks like a TV remote. At least a bit.’
‘So you took it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You stole it?’ She was beginning to think some of the things her father said about his sister in the journal might be all too accurate. Mella was starting to build up a dislike of her aunt as well.
‘No, of course I didn’t steal it. I borrowed it.’
‘But you never gave it back.’ Mella made it as much a flat statement as a question.
‘I didn’t have a chance,’ Aisling protested. ‘He kept going off places.’
‘Did you ever use it?’
‘No,’ Aisling said too quickly.
Mella stared at her. ‘I thought you said you borrowed it for your television thing: what did you want it for if you weren’t going to use it?’ Aisling said nothing. Mella said, ‘Are you sure you never used it?’
Aisling’s mouth formed itself into the hint of a pout. ‘Well, I might have. Once. Once or twice.’
‘Indoors or outside?’
‘Outside in the garden.’
‘So you knew it wasn’t a television control?’
Aisling suddenly sat down on the stairs. ‘I knew he was up to something – him and that old pervert Fogarty. I knew they were doing things together. Mummy and Daddy never suspected, but I did. It was really creepy. He was always slipping out and staying away longer than he should. Fogarty made things, you know. Electrical things. In his back kitchen. Henry never found out, but I followed him twice and I know he went to see Mr Fogarty and I watched through the window and he made some really strange stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made this.’ She tossed the useless control on to the step beside her.
He certainly did, Mella thought, but said nothing. She continued to stare at Aisling in silence for a moment, then said, ‘What happened?’
‘When I used it? It opened up a sort of… thing. Just there, in the air in front of me. Like it did today.’
‘What did you do?’ Mella asked.
‘Nothing the first time,’ Aisling said. ‘I mean, it looked like a fire and I didn’t want to get burned.’
‘And what about the next time?’
Aisling glanced away to one side. ‘The second time I realised there was no heat, so I stuck my finger in carefully and the fire didn’t burn me. Then I tried my whole arm and it still didn’t burn me. I thought it might be some sort of doorway from something I heard Henry say to Mr Fogarty once. Well, I thought it might be anyway. So eventually I walked through.’
Mella blinked. ‘Into the Realm?’
‘A sort of desert place. It’s the Faerie Realm, isn’t it? What they used to call the Faerie Realm. I knew it! I absolutely knew it!’
‘Parts of it are desert,’ Mella said.
‘One time I was inside a building with a long corridor with purple carpet and crystal chandeliers.’
The Purple Palace, Mella breathed. Aloud she said, ‘So you went more than once?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t go very far – I was being careful. And responsible. Usually I just stepped in and looked around and stepped back out again and then I closed the gateway or whatever it was. I never met anybody. Nobody ever saw me.’
‘This is very important,’ Mella said. ‘Did you ever make adjustments to any of the dials on the control? Any buttons or switches or sliders or anything? Did you ever fiddle with anything except the on-off button?’ She already knew the answer. Unless Aunt Aisling reset the control, it would have continued to take her to the same place. But it hadn’t kept taking her to the same place, so she must have been fiddling with the settings, maybe not knowing she was doing it, but fiddling with them just the same. Fiddling a lot.
‘I may have,’ Aisling said defensively. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t. And I only used it a few times. After a while it wouldn’t work for me at all. I mean until today when you told me about the safety switch and that broke it.’
She could have reset it for anywhere, Mella thought. They could be anywhere in the Faerie Realm, in any country, friendly or unfriendly. Worse still, Aunt Aisling had broken the control, so they had no means of getting back.
‘Come on,’ Mella said and began to move cautiously down the winding staircase.
Aisling stood up quickly and followed. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To try to find out where we are.’
‘Is that safe?’
Mella was getting fed up with her aunt. ‘What else do you suggest we do?’
The staircase descended into a low-ceilinged room with an open door. There was a murmur of voices from along the corridor outside. Aisling had been hanging back nervously, letting Mella take the lead. (Letting Mella take the risks!) Now she stopped dead. ‘There’s someone there!’ she hissed.
‘Yes,’ Mella murmured. The voices were low-pitched, like a group of people engaged in a discussion. ‘We’d better find out who they are.’
‘What happens if they’re hoodies or soccer hooligans or something?’ Aisling asked. ‘They might mug us.’
Mella threw her a contemptuous glance. ‘And they might invite us for supper.’ All the same, Aunt Aisling was right: it would be silly to barge into something without checking first. ‘We’ll just take a look. If we’re careful, we should be able to scout things out without them seeing us.’
‘You go,’ Aisling said quickly. ‘You’re smaller.’ When Mella stared at her, she added, ‘You can hide more easily.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Mella demanded.
‘I’ll stay here.’ Aisling looked around, clearly searching for a place of concealment.
Mella moved to the open doorway and looked out cautiously. What she’d taken for a corridor turned out to be a narrow balcony. She edged towards the railing and peeped over.
The balcony overlooked some sort of conference room, a little like the Discussion Chamber in the Purple Palace where her parents met up with visiting heads of state. It was equipped with three cabinets and a large oval table around which sat four men and three women, all dressed in identical red robes. Cowled hoods threw their features into shadow so that it was impossible to see their faces clearly. Double doors at one end of the chamber were conspicuously bolted and barred. A heady scent of incense magic wafted upwards. At least Mella assumed it was incense magic: she’d never seen it used before.
One of the men was talking in a precise, high-pitched voice. ‘… Just short of two thousand current stocks.’ He looked around. ‘You will recall the setback we experienced last year.’ There was a murmur of angry agreement.
The woman at the head of the table had eyes that flashed red from under her hood. ‘Our target figure is ten thousand, is it not?’
It was another of the men, a tall, upright figure, who answered. ‘That was the minimum military estimate to ensure a successful campaign. Assuming suitable troop back-up, equipment and spell power.’
‘There was some talk of less,’ the woman said.
‘There was,’ the tall man agreed. ‘Companion Marshal Houndstooth’s plan called for only four thousand three hundred, but the troop back-up doubled, the necessary spell power tripled and so did the costs. That’s why we abandoned it in April.’
‘I am concerned about the timing,’ the woman said
flatly.
‘Astrologically?’ another of the women asked.
‘Yes.’
The tall man said, ‘That has been taken into consideration.’
‘I don’t see how it could be,’ said the woman at the head of the table. ‘If we still haven’t managed to produce two thousand units and what we have managed to produce has taken more than a year, it will take at least five years to reach our goal total. I appreciate the loss of our prototype was something of a setback, but it cost us no more than a month or two as I understand it. Am I not correct in this?’
‘You are correct, Companion,’ the precise man said in his high-pitched voice. ‘But you must appreciate that we are now no longer manufacturing, but breeding – a process that proceeds exponentially and is thus considerably faster.’
‘Exponentially?’ the woman echoed.
‘To convert one item into one thousand items exponentially requires the time it takes for eleven separate operations, which is quite considerable. But to produce the next one thousand items requires only one further operation, as does the next two thousand and the next four.’
‘The process accelerates?’
‘Dramatically.’
‘Are you claiming,’ the woman said, ‘that we may still reach our target in time for the eclipse?’
‘We shall reach our target before the eclipse,’ the man assured her.
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