‘Your love Henry will perish if you do not do this thing,’ he said.
Sixty-One
Although she would have died rather than admit it, Madame Cardui felt old. There was so much to do and, for the first time in her life, she had started to doubt her ability to do it. She was back in her office at the Palace with a full support staff now – a written order from Blue had sorted out that silly misunderstanding about her imprisonment – but even so she felt her grip on things slipping and slipping and slipping.
Part of it was the plague. There were constant reports of its spread now, and not just the panic that followed the outbreak of any major illness. These were genuine cases, striking indiscriminately at young and old. Two of her staff were plotting its spread using maps from the Situation Room beneath the Palace and the grip the disease now had throughout the Empire was worrying. Or to face facts, frightening. It was crossing borders too, as plagues did, into neighbouring countries. Which meant it was only a matter of time before those borders began to close, with a devastating affect on trade.
Worse still, there were more and more deaths being reported. Most worrying of all, many of them were now occurring among the young, who in theory should have had a large reserve of their future to draw upon. The plague seemed to be growing more virulent. Or possibly – and this was something she dreaded to contemplate – it meant that no one, young or old, had very much future left. It was possible the entire Realm was facing a disaster of unparalleled magnitude.
Dear Gods, she wished Alan were still here. He would have known what to do. If there was anything still left to do …
It felt as though her Intelligence network were crumbling too. Perhaps an exaggeration, but it really did not seem to be functioning as efficiently as it once had. She appeared to have lost Chalkhill, for example. A dreadful man and quite possibly a double agent, but even as a double agent he could be useful. Clearly there was something going on with the Brotherhood, and her instinct told her there might even be a connection with the plague. Was it possible the imbeciles were experimenting with germ warfare. She found the idea hard to accept, but Lord Hairstreak was using the Brotherhood as a power base now and she would put nothing past him.
When the knock came to her door, she assumed it was a secretary and murmured, ‘Come in’, then looked up to find Nymph standing over her. ‘My deeah, what a pleasant surprise. I thought you were still in the Analogue World with Pyrgus. How is the poor -?’ She caught Nymph’s expression and stopped. ‘What’s wrong?’
Nymph said, ‘Pyrgus has caught an Analogue disease.’
Sixty-Two
Henry thought his hands were turning blue.
He stared at them, frowning. They weren’t actually blue, not cobalt or azure or navy or anything like that, but they definitely had a bluish tinge. At first he’d thought it was his imagination and then he’d thought it was a trick of the light, but now he was certain something physical was happening. Maybe the desert did that to you. There might be something in the sand, or something in the spectrum of the sun, the way a desert sun at home would give you a deep tan.
The interesting thing was Henry was toughening up and drying out, a bit like an old boot. (An old blue boot.) Neither his arm nor leg hurt much any more. His thirst was a constant low-key background he could generally ignore and he needed far less of the liquid Lorquin produced from time to time. He could also keep going for longer before he had to stop and rest. He was even developing that peculiar loping gait Lorquin had. It was a half-conscious imitation, but the new way of walking ate up the miles with minimum effort.
Henry was less successful in his attempts to find his way around. Lorquin made valiant efforts to teach him. The secret was, apparently, to study the angle of the sun along with patterns the wind made in the sand. Henry could follow the bit about the sun easily enough – it moved across the sky much the same way it did at home but try as he might, he couldn’t see the patterns Lorquin saw in the sand. And the deep desert was as featureless of landmarks as it had always been.
For some reason Henry had assumed Lorquin’s people would be fairly close to the place where Lorquin killed his draugr. And maybe they had been when Lorquin set out on his quest. But they were nomads and they were certainly not close by now. After two days of walking, there was no sign of them. But then he still couldn’t see anything when Lorquin announced they’d arrived.
Henry looked around. He’d half expected a rock face with caves, or inhabited ruins, or a community of crude tents. But all around him was a plain of flat, featureless sand. Even the rolling dunes had disappeared.
‘Welcome to my village,’ Lorquin said, grinning proudly.
Henry looked around again. Was Lorquin’s village invisible? Somehow it didn’t make sense. Why cast a spell over an entire community? And if you did, how would people find each other? No, it wasn’t invisibility. But there wasn’t any village round here either. After a minute, feeling foolish, Henry said, ‘Where?’
He started violently as something whooshed up out of the sand. Then something else and something else and something else. In an eye blink he was surrounded by a ring of blue-skinned, naked people. Some of the men carried spears. One sported fearsome – and very colourful – tattoos. They glared malevolently at Henry.
Henry took a step backwards, his heart suddenly thumping. But Lorquin hurled himself forward to embrace a glowering, ugly, beetle-browed individual with what looked suspiciously like filed teeth, ‘I did it, Dad!’ he shouted, ‘I killed the draugr!’
The words galvanised the gathering. In seconds people were leaping and whooping in a lively dance. Several of the men came forward to thump Lorquin on the back and Henry noticed one of the younger girls grinning at him. A plump woman with kind eyes and a broad smile pushed through the crowd to hug him fondly: Henry imagined this had to be Lorquin’s mother and fancied he even saw a family resemblance. One unusually tall man (a tribal chief?) called out, ‘Tonight we feast!’ The announcement was greeted by a loud communal cheer; then Lorquin was being pushed from one to another, fondly shaken, kissed, grinned at, congratulated.
Then suddenly it stopped. In the absolute silence, they turned slowly and stared at Henry.
Henry took another step backwards, smiled nervously and said, ‘Ah – ’ He stopped smiling, licked his lips and wondered if there was the slightest possibility he could outrun these fearsome people in the desert. Somehow, he didn’t rate his chances.
Then Lorquin had his father by the hand and was dragging him across. ‘This is my Companion,’ he announced.
And with that the atmosphere changed again, dramatically. Suddenly Henry was closely surrounded. People were smiling, people were touching him, tugging curiously at his clothing, people were talking to him in such a jumble of voices that he could understand none of it. He was aware of a collective body odour, not at all unpleasant, but spicy and strong. The word Companion bounced across the hum of noise like a ball. It was clear the whole tribe took their customs as seriously as Lorquin.
The tall man shouldered his way through the throng, said something to Henry that he couldn’t catch, then abruptly stood still and stretched to his fullest height, slowly rotating his head in a bizarre movement that took it round further than Henry would ever have believed possible. ‘Vaettirs coming,’ he said shortly, although there was nothing in sight for as far as the eye could see. He wound back his incredible neck and glanced in Lorquin’s direction. ‘They pursued you long.’
What happened next was so swift Henry scarcely had time to follow it. The members of Lorquin’s tribe took one another’s hands, but in a very specific sequence that reminded Henry a little of a Mexican Wave. Lorquin was last in line, but lunged forward to grab Henry’s hand. There was a sensation of falling, or, more accurately, sinking, as if he was in quicksand. To his horror, he realised that was exactly what was happening – the entire tribe was sinking into the sand and him with them. He started to call out, but the sand was up to his shoulders now,
then his neck, his chin, his mouth … He was drowning in sand!
Henry started to struggle violently, but Lorquin had an iron grip on his hand. Seconds later, the quicksand engulfed him.
Sixty-Three
He was aware of a haze of dusty orange light. It wasn’t bright, but it was bright enough to see the others and, as his eyes adjusted, things became a little clearer. They were moving like a shoal of fish, swimming. But not through water: he was sure of that. He could breathe, for one thing, and breathe easily. Yet the swimming thing was exactly what he was doing. He could go up or down just by kicking with both feet. He could move forward by sweeping with his arms. Lorquin was close by. The boy had let go of Henry’s hand, but was signalling him to follow.
The tribe were stretched into an elongated V formation, like a massive flight of geese, with the tall man at their head. They plunged forward and downward, heads first, in an easy motion, for all the world like a school of dolphins. But where were they swimming? All Henry could think of was sinking into sand, but this clearly wasn’t sand: you couldn’t swim through sand. You couldn’t even swim in quicksand – all you did there was drown. Yet he’d sunk into sand and there was no water in the desert to make quicksand and they were definitely swimming (and breathing!) and …
And it was actually a nice sensation. Henry did something he very seldom did and lightened up. Still swimming, he rolled over on his back and tilted his head so he could still see Lorquin and the tribe. The orange light was brighter high above him and he thought he could just about make out the position of a diffuse sun. They were swimming underneath the sand. They had to be. Nothing else made sense, even though that didn’t make sense either. It was like being underwater, except they were under sand. He was swimming and breathing and floating and it was really, really lovely.
A curious chirping sound reached him – that was like a dolphin too – and as he twisted his head he realised it was coming from Lorquin, who was signalling him to catch up. Henry pushed powerfully with his legs and was rewarded by an exhilarating spurt of speed. This was utterly delicious! Once he’d managed to grow wings and fly when he translated to the Faerie Realm, but even that had been nothing like this. Sand swimming was warm and comforting and wonderful.
He kept wondering how it was happening. Lorquin and his people looked like faeries – primitive faeries admittedly, but not some sort of creepy different race. And even if they were some sort of creepy different race that had evolved the trick of swimming in sand, that hardly explained how Henry could now swim in sand as well. All that was needed was Lorquin to take his hand and drag him under and now he was doing it!
There was a city ahead.
Henry blinked. (How could you blink under sand?) He could see towers and spires and walls and turrets rising up out of the seabed – not the seabed: he wasn’t under water, but he couldn’t think what else to call it. He could see segments of paved roadway. It was a little gloomy up ahead, but he could definitely see it. Unless this was some sort of mirage, some gigantic illusion, there was a city out there … and they were heading directly for it.
He kicked strongly until he caught up with the others and swam beside Lorquin. ‘What’s that up ahead?’ he tried to ask, but for some reason the words came out as a series of dolphin chirps.
Lorquin turned his head to smile at him and emitted another series of chirps in response, but Henry could make nothing of them. He rolled, then swam upwards a little to get a better view. The city was resolving itself more clearly and now he could see it was largely ruins, like some vast underwater Atlantis swallowed by a prehistoric tidal wave. Henry wanted to shout with excitement, but kept his mouth tight shut and listened to the pounding of his heart instead.
Up ahead, the leaders of the tribe reached a flat stretch of crumbling pavement and abruptly dropped down. Now, suddenly, they moved towards the towering buildings at a walk, no longer swimming. Henry had a moment of panic as he caught up – what was happening here? – but then, without warning, popped through some sort of invisible membrane and floated, light as thistledown to reach the pavement himself.
He took a few hesitant steps after the others and experienced the curious sensation of increasing weight. But the weirdest thing was he’d felt this way before. As a kid in the bath, he sometimes let the water drain away without getting out. As he lay there and the water disappeared, his body – no longer buoyed up – grew heavier and heavier until it reached its normal weight. It was exactly like that now, except this time he was standing up.
Lorquin appeared beside him, cheerful as ever. ‘We’re home,’ he said without a single dolphin chirp. ‘We live here.’ He smiled hugely up at Henry. ‘You can live here too,’ he said. ‘Because you are my Companion.’
Sixty-Four
Madame Cardui had never been to the Analogue World before and it took her less than half an hour to decide she didn’t like it.
The worst of it was the utterly hideous clothing she was forced to wear. No sense of style, or cut, or colour whatsoever. And naturally no woven spells. So everything just hung on one’s body with all the panache of splattered porridge.
‘What are those?’ she asked coldly when Nymph produced a particularly repulsive garment.
‘Trousers,’ Nymph said briefly.
The girl was worried about Pyrgus. They were both worried about Pyrgus. But all the same … ‘Men’s garments?’ Madame Cardui asked her. ‘You expect me to indulge in cross-dressing?’
Nymph shook her head. ‘No, no, Madame Cardui. These are not men’s garments. These are part of a woman’s suit. Trousers and a jacket. Muted colours, darker shades. These sort of clothes are very popular in the Analogue World.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘Particularly for the older woman.’
Madame Cardui glared at her. ‘Then I shall certainly not wear them.’
She settled eventually on a heavily frilled blouse, open at the neck and worn with an ankle-length gypsy skirt and open sandals. As an afterthought she added a silk scarf for extra colour. It was a far cry from what she was used to, but at least it showed a little flair. Nymph looked at her uncertainly. ‘No arguments,’ said Madame Cardui coldly. One had to keep up standards, even in the Analogue World.
Translation, as it turned out, was rather fun. She would have liked to use one of Alan’s portable transporters just as a small remembrance – but he had made so very few of them before he died and all had eventually begun to exhibit that unfortunate fault which turned people inside out. So she stepped with Nymph into the cold blue flames of the official Palace portal. Which produced a sensation similar to stepping off a cliff, something which, curiously, she found enjoyable.
But enjoyable was not an adjective one would readily use to describe the Analogue World, she discovered. For their stay in this ridiculous dimension, Pyrgus and Nymph had rented a small country estate suited, if only just, to the status of a Faerie Prince and his consort. But the place, it transpired, was built on granite with such a high quartz content that portal technology would not work in the immediate vicinity. The young people took the inconvenience in their stride, of course, and Nymph had arranged transportation from the actual (and thankfully well-concealed) portal outlet.
Madame Cardui stared at the carriage, aghast. ‘What is that?’
‘It’s called a motor car,’ Nymph said.
‘Why is it such a peculiar shape?’
‘They make them that way,’ Nymph said vaguely. She walked across to open the door.
Madame Cardui peered inside suspiciously, ‘I thought they used horses to draw their carriages?’
Nymph shook her head. ‘That was a long time ago.’
Madame Cardui straightened up, frowning. ‘So they use spell technology now?’
Nymph shook her head again. She smiled slightly. ‘Most humans don’t even believe in magic any more you know the problems Henry’s had with it.’
‘So how does it work?’ Madame Cardui asked, ‘I assume it does work?’
‘There i
s a mechanical engine,’ Nymph said. ‘Concealed in that bulge on the front.’
‘Good grief – is it safe?’
‘Not very,’ Nymph admitted, ‘but we haven’t far to go.’ She climbed into the extraordinary contraption and signed for Madame Cardui to join her.
‘Where is our driver?’ Madame Cardui asked as she did so.
‘I shall drive,’ Nymph said.
‘You, deeah?’
‘Pyrgus taught me,’ Nymph said, smiling proudly. ‘He’s quite good at it.’ She leaned forward and unlocked something in one wall of the carriage. The entire structure shook and growled like a demented cat.
‘Does it always make that noise?’ asked Madame Cardui.
Far to go or not, the journey was frankly sordid. The carriage didn’t fly, wouldn’t even hover, so that it jerked and rattled and hummed and growled on primitive wheels (wheels!) along trackways that were filled – positively filled – with similar repulsive vehicles. Everything was smell and confusion and noise and poor Nymphalis had to steer the thing herself. Not even an elemental to lighten the load.
Matters improved somewhat as they neared Pyrgus and Nymph’s Analogue home, mainly because it was some distance from any major centre of population and consequently there were far fewer – what was it Nymph called them? – motor cars about. But that did not make the Analogue World any more appealing. The sky was the wrong shade of blue, where it showed blue at all. The clouds were generally of an irritatingly different shape to Realm clouds. Even sunshine wasn’t right. It had a curious whiteness about it, not at all as pleasant as the rich gold of faerie sunshine.
Eventually Nymph manoeuvred their carriage off the public trackways altogether and through a set of tall, imposing gates. Madame Cardui shivered. ‘Those aren’t iron, are they?’ she asked.
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