Faerie Lord

by Herbie Brennan

  ‘Are you sure?’ Blue asked.

  Henry let go of her arm. ‘Only one way to find out,’ he said. And walked towards the cage.

  Ninety-Eight

  Chief Wizard Healer Danaus frowned. He was looking down on the frozen body of the Forest Princess Nymphalis, locked in stasis beside the body of her husband, Prince Pyrgus. Both showed the age ravages of temporal fever, Pyrgus more than Nymph so far – since stasis ceased to hold the fever, he had turned into an old, old man – but Nymph certainly. From a young woman she had transformed into a mature woman, a middle-aged woman really, and he had been vaguely considering increasing the intensity of the stasis field. Not that he believed it would do any good – you were either in stasis or you weren’t – but he disliked the feeling of helplessness that came when there was absolutely nothing one could do. Thus he stood staring at Nymphalis and … and she looked a little younger.

  Which was impossible, of course. The temporal fever was a one-way trip. Even when stasis still stabilised it, nothing reversed the effect. So possibly he was imagining it. Wishful thinking sometimes had an influence on observation, even trained observation. All the same, he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling she seemed younger. Her skin tone looked better. He could have sworn there were fewer, if only just a little fewer, wrinkles.

  On impulse, Danaus stepped across to the stasis cabinet that held Pyrgus. The shock was so great that he actually gasped aloud. Pyrgus too looked younger, a lot younger. There was no possibility of a mistake. The effects of the fever were reversing.

  For once Danaus forgot his dignity and ran down to the wards. But even before he reached them, the commotion told him something dramatic was happening. As he burst into the corridor nurses were scampering in all directions, healers were hurrying to and fro, but most astonishing, most amazing, most bewildering of all was the fact that patients were on their feet as well, patients who just that morning on his rounds had been lying in deep comas.

  Danaus grabbed the arm of a blue-coated healer as he hurried past. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

  ‘Spontaneous remissions,’ the healer told him shortly.

  It was the sort of stupid thing they’d all been trained to say when they had no idea what was actually happening, ‘I can see that,’ Danaus snapped. ‘What’s caused them?’

  The healer shook his head. ‘Don’t know, sir.’ Then, annoyingly, he smiled. ‘But it’s great news, is it not, sir?’

  Great news but bewildering. By the time Danaus had made a few cursory examinations to convince himself the effect was genuine, reports were pouring in from outside of "spontaneous remissions" throughout the capital city. He had not the slightest doubt that similar news from the surrounding country would be arriving soon.

  With so many patients suddenly recovering, the administration burden was heavy and it was late afternoon before he suddenly remembered Nymph and Pyrgus were still in stasis. And hot on the heels of that realisation came another: Madame Cardui was in stasis too. He’d had her placed there as a matter of course for a woman her age even though all the evidence was it would no longer hold back her disease. What else could he do? Stasis might have staved off her inevitable death for a few more hours. Or she might be dead already.

  Or possibly she’d undergone a spontaneous remission like all the rest.

  He was on his way to find out when someone told him Queen Blue had returned to the Purple Palace.

  Ninety-Nine

  It was raining, of course. Since he’d inherited Burgundy’s old Keep, Lord Hairstreak had found it more economical to leave the weather spells in place than have them neutralised. So the Keep remained exactly as it had been when Hamearis was alive, a Gothic nightmare clinging to a cliff edge, buffeted by breakers and lashed by heavy rain and howling winds.

  No matter. It suited his mood.

  Hairstreak climbed out onto the battlements, wrapping his cloak around him. From this vantage point, he could see the approach road and the angry sea. There were no ouklos, no carriages of any sort. There were no boats, no flyers overhead. No one visited now. If they had, there were no servants to greet them.

  The chill insinuated itself inside his cloak, but he ignored it. Where, he wondered, had it all gone wrong? It seemed such a very short time ago since the whole world and its potential had stretched endlessly before him. His sister married to the Purple Emperor. His followers solidly behind him. It had seemed only a matter of time – and a short time at that – before the Faeries of the Night took control of the Realm, with himself at their head.

  How different things looked now. His brother-in-law, Apatura Iris, the old Purple Emperor, dead, resurrected and dead again. His daughter on the throne. Hairstreak’s old demon ally, Beleth, dead as well and Blue now Queen of Hael. All the old alliances and arrangements in tatters. The Lighters more firmly in control than they’d been for centuries. How had it all gone so horribly wrong?

  His hands reached out to grip the stonework of the battlements. Where, he wondered, had his money gone? Oh, it was simplistic to say that with Beleth dead his major source of income disappeared as well. But where were his properties, his reserves, his massive lines of credit?

  The plain fact was that maintaining a political presence was ruinously expensive. The bribes alone were crippling, and if one did not keep up appearances, no one took you seriously. So in a frighteningly short space of time, his reserves had shrunk, his properties sold off or repossessed, his lines of credit dried up. And with them went his so-called friends, although that was no surprise. He’d never been under illusions about any of them. Ultimately, he’d relied on no one but himself.

  He still thought his last scheme had been a good one. Lighters … Nighters … men of means always wanted servants and always would: the cheaper the better, which was why demon service was so appealing. One payment and you had a slave for life. He could never understand why the arrangement had never really caught on with the Lighters – they were quick enough to abandon their religion in other areas when it suited them. But the new scheme was even better! How could anybody object to angels?

  Where did it all go wrong?

  He stepped closer to the edge and felt the wind pluck at him like giant fingers. He felt, as he had felt so often in the past, a little angry, a little resentful, greatly disappointed, but most of all confused and weary to the bone.

  How had it all gone wrong?

  Lord Hairstreak stepped from the battlements and launched himself towards the cliffs below. As he fell, the wind spread his cloak so that he looked for all the world like a giant bat.

  One Hundred

  The conclave took place in the Throne Room, an interesting choice since it meant Blue was prepared to accept that word of any decisions made would quickly leak through the Palace and from there, more quickly still, into a waiting world.

  Madame Cardui looked from face to face. Of them all, Blue actually looked a little older, a young woman now, rather than a girl, calm enough by all appearances, but perhaps a little worn by her experiences. Beside her sat Henry. Except for the tan and a little weight loss, his appearance was much as it always had been, but his manner was different. He seemed far more at ease with himself, more confident, more – what was that Analogue expression? – laid back. He still didn’t say a great deal, but his eyes moved a lot and you had the impression they missed very little.

  Comma seemed watchful too, but at the same time pleasantly relaxed. He’d carried out his duties with dignity and surrendered the throne without fuss when his sister returned. Among the others, Nymph looked as Nymph had always looked: serene, confident and beautiful. All traces of the temporal fever were gone and it was as if she’d never been ill a day in her life. Pyrgus actually looked younger, as if his disease had gone into reverse but then hadn’t stopped where it started. Madame Cardui gave him the barest ghost of a smile. All that was probably her imagination, of course, but really he sat there like a boy again … and like his father as a boy. Strange how the years went
around, even without the aid of temporal fever.

  Although normally not included in a meeting of this type, Danaus was present as well. He looked as he always looked: tall, overweight, overbearing, full of his own importance, trustworthy and competent. His work on the fever had earned him his place here now: he deserved to be told directly what it had all been about.

  The one notable absentee, Madame Cardui noted with a wave of almost inexpressible sorrow, was Alan. His advice would be sorely missed. She wondered briefly who Blue would appoint as her new Gatekeeper. No obvious candidate sprang to mind.

  The great doors of the Throne Room closed and eyes turned expectantly to Blue. It was Hairstreak, Madame Cardui thought – she was sure of that – but how or why she did not know.

  ‘It was my uncle,’ Blue said without preliminary, as if reading Madame Cardui’s thoughts.

  Frowning, Danaus said, ‘He caused the temporal fever?’

  Blue nodded. ‘He was the cause, yes.’

  ‘It was some sort of weapon, I assume, deeah?’ Madame Cardui asked. ‘Warfare by disease? He planned to use it to weaken your position?’

  But Blue shook her head. ‘He didn’t plan any of it, not the fever, not warfare. No coup, or anything of that sort. The spread of the fever was a side effect of his actual plans.’

  ‘You really are annoying, Blue,’ Pyrgus said impatiently. ‘Why don’t you just tell us what happened without dragging it all out?’

  Blue suppressed a smile and said imperiously, ‘Very well. You know how much money and influence our uncle lost when I became Queen of Hael …?’

  Pyrgus said, ‘You’re talking about the slave trade? The way he used to make money off demon servants?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m talking about. He tried to recoup his fortunes by reviving the trade.’

  This time it was Pyrgus who frowned. ‘But he couldn’t. You’d never let him use demons the way Beleth did.’

  ‘Not demons,’ Blue said. ‘Angels.’

  There was absolute silence in the Throne Room for almost fifteen heartbeats; then Madame Cardui said, ‘You can’t be serious, deeah.’

  ‘Completely,’ Blue said soberly. ‘Hairstreak commissioned our old friend Brimstone to evoke and trap an angel – Brimstone was an extremely skilful diabolist, you’ll recall. I don’t know exactly how he did it, but he managed the commission. The idea was that once a successful method of evocation was in place and Brimstone demonstrated he could hold an angel captive. Hairstreak would start capturing angels on a commercial scale, then hire them out as servants – essentially slaves. Angels are extremely powerful, as you know – far more so than demons. The potential for such an enterprise …’ She shrugged. ‘Well, among the unscrupulous, it’s gigantic.’

  ‘A moment, Your Majesty,’ Danaus put in formally. ‘What has this to do with temporal fever?’

  ‘It was the direct cause, Chief Wizard Healer,’ Blue said. ‘As you know, Haven is a great deal further from the Faerie Realm than Hael. Brimstone’s brutal capture of even a single angel placed an enormous strain on the fabric of our reality. Very soon people began to experience this as time slippage – what we called temporal fever and thought of as a disease. But it wasn’t a disease, not really. It was the way our reality was being distorted.’

  Danaus looked appalled. ‘Why on earth didn’t this Brimstone person release the angel when he discovered what was happening. Why didn’t Lord Hairstreak make him?’

  ‘They didn’t know,’ Blue said. ‘Neither of them. They thought temporal fever was a disease, just like the rest of us. I doubt any of us would have found out the truth if there hadn’t been – ’ she glanced briefly at Henry ’ – an intervention.’

  ‘What sort of intervention?’ Pyrgus asked curiously.

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ Blue said firmly. ‘What matters is that the angel has been released, our reality is returning to normal and the effects – the temporal fever, as we called it – are dying out.’

  For a moment, Pyrgus looked as though he might try to push her for more information, but when he spoke again he said only, ‘What do we do about Uncle Hairstreak and Brimstone?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Blue said.

  Madame Cardui raised an eyebrow. ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Brimstone is insane,’ Blue said bluntly. ‘He will be no further trouble to us. My uncle … well, doubtless he will be trouble if he gets the chance, but as things stand at the moment, he has failed abysmally to improve his position and any move we make against him might well provoke some sympathy for him among the Faeries of the Night.’

  Madame Cardui watched her admiringly. The girl was learning some real political skills at last.

  Blue stood up abruptly. ‘There may be another important announcement later,’ she said firmly, ‘but for the moment I think that’s all I have to tell you.’

  One Hundred and One

  The sound of the water was overlaid by distant street noise from the city: the rumble of carts, the occasional call from a merchant. The city came alive at night in ways it never did during the day. Henry was sitting with Blue on a bench beside the river, half hidden by a mimosa bush. They were holding hands.

  ‘What was the important announcement you mentioned?’ he asked her. ‘The one you said you might make later?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Blue said. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

  Henry looked at her blankly and Blue looked away.

  After a while, Henry said, ‘It seemed staged somehow.’

  He was thinking of their adventure with the dragon and Blue seemed instinctively to know this, ‘It was staged,’ she said. ‘By one of the Old Gods.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Henry mildly. He looked out across the river, aware they were talking about this because he still was not quite ready to talk about what was really on his mind.

  ‘I think to help heal our reality,’ Blue said. She hesitated, then added, ‘And to make sure our stories followed the proper form.’

  ‘Whose stories?’

  ‘Ours,’ Blue said. ‘Yours and mine.’

  There was a wading bird in the shallows of the river. At first Henry didn’t recognise it – then the curve of the beak brought to mind a picture he’d once seen in a book on Egypt and he realised it was an ibis.

  ‘I didn’t understand that,’ he said to Blue.

  ‘A priest once told me the Old Gods believe that mortal lives are lived to act out certain stories. Sometimes they intervene to make sure the stories turn out the way they should – they way they were fated to, I suppose.’

  ‘So we weren’t really in danger from the dragon?’ Henry said, ‘It was just a story – like a play on stage?’

  ‘The dragon could have killed you,’ Blue said soberly. ‘I don’t know what it would have done to me. The stories are real, they’re the patterns of the ways we lead our lives. Some of them end in tragedy. Like you being eaten by a dragon.’ She smiled slightly. ‘But you were brave, so it didn’t happen.’

  They sat in silence for a long time after that. Then Henry said, ‘Blue?’

  ‘Yes, Henry?’

  ‘Do you remember the last time we walked here by the river?’

  Blue nodded. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Do you remember what you said to me?’

  Blue nodded again. ‘Yes, I do.’

  Henry licked his lips. He was aware of the sudden pounding of his heart and hoped it wasn’t noticeable to Blue. He took a deep breath. ‘You asked me to marry you.’

  ‘I was very young then,’ Blue said without inflection.

  He felt something deflate inside him. But he’d gone too far to stop now. Besides, what was he afraid of? He’d faced a dragon, hadn’t he? He licked his lips again. ‘Do you still want to?’ he asked.

  There was silence broken by the lapping of the water. After a long time Blue said, ‘It doesn’t matter what I want, does it. Not really. You have a life in the Analogue World.’

  ‘I don’t like it very much,’ said Henry, �
��I don’t want to be a teacher.’

  ‘What about your parents?’ Blue asked mildly. She was staring out across the water and had let go of his hand.

  ‘Mum has Anais,’ Henry said. ‘Dad’s gone – I don’t even see that much of him. He’s living with his girlfriend and making a whole new life for himself and he’s happy. At least I think he is. At least he doesn’t have Mum telling him what to do all the time.’ Henry tried to reach for her hand again, but she drew it away gently. All the same, he went on earnestly. ‘But that isn’t the point, is it? I’m going to be gone myself soon I mean, even if I stay in the Analogue World, I’m going to be gone soon. I’d go to university or teacher training and there’s not one nearby, so I’d have to board. I’d hardly see them, either of them. Then after that, I’d have my own life as a teacher or whatever. You grow up, you leave home: that’s the way it is. If I stayed here it would be just the same as if I married an Analogue girl and bought a semi-detached somewhere.’

  She still wasn’t looking at him, but he thought he caught the ghost of a smile on her lips. ‘Not quite the same,’ she said. ‘Where would you tell them you’d gone?’

  Henry blinked. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Fairyland?’ Blue said, one eyebrow raised. She’d obviously picked up the term somewhere and knew its connotations.

  ‘I thought I might do what Mr Fogarty did and pretend I planned to emigrate – New Zealand or Australia or somewhere. Somewhere far.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I thought there might be some sort of spell cone I could use to help them accept it.’

  ‘My,’ said Blue, ‘you have been working things out.’ She gave him a quick, sidelong glance. ‘What about your education?’

  ‘I could finish that off here,’ Henry said, ‘It would be a lot more interesting.’ He waited, staring at her. When she said nothing more, he asked, ‘Well, do you?’