The Purple Emperor

by Herbie Brennan

  ‘What’s an obsidian maze,’ Comma echoed. He was staring down at the body with fascination.

  ‘It’s a game,’ Pyrgus said. ‘The maze is filled with lethal tricks and traps, demons, wild animals, that sort of thing. You put somebody in it and the game is to see if they’ll survive.’

  Nymph stared at him. ‘You make a game out of watching somebody fighting for their life?’

  Pyrgus shook his head. ‘We don’t. It’s illegal. Has been for a long time—centuries. I can’t remember when it was made illegal, it was so long ago.’

  ‘Except,’ Blue said sourly, ‘our friend Hairstreak seems to have built himself one.’ She looked at Pyrgus. ‘I wonder why there haven’t been rumours—I never heard so much as a whisper.’

  ‘Obviously has good security,’ Pyrgus sniffed. He was staring down at the broken body of the little wizard. ‘What are we going to do about Ziczac?’

  ‘He’s dead, Pyrgus—there’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘I meant about the body.’

  ‘Oh,’ Blue said. They stared down together.

  Nymph said sharply, ‘I’ll get it if you’re squeamish. He was my friend.’

  Pyrgus said, ‘He was a friend to all of us, Nymph. But most traps in an obsidian maze have double triggers.’

  ‘What’s that mean, Crown Prince?’ She was looking at him angrily.

  Blue said, ‘It means that if anybody tries to go down there, it will trigger a second trap, more lethal than the first. It may even seal off this segment of the maze, flood it with poison gas, something like that. Ordinary traps can be avoided if you’re careful, but the rules of the game are that secondary traps can be built with no way out.’

  ‘You know a lot about this game, Princess Royal,’ Nymph said.

  ‘Blue knows about all sorts of stuff,’ Comma said. He was still staring into the pit.

  ‘I studied it in my history lessons,’ Blue snapped.

  Nymph’s face was expressionless, but her voice softened a little. ‘We shall have to leave him where he lies—we cannot endanger the party further. It is a warrior’s death.’

  Henry came up beside them. ‘Except he wasn’t a warrior.’

  ‘He was our only way out of here,’ Blue said.

  They all turned to look at her.

  Blue said, ‘Without Ziczac, we can’t pass through walls. We may have to fight our way out of Hairstreak’s mansion.’ She glanced around.

  Comma said quietly, ‘If we survive his obsidian maze.’

  Brimstone looked at the tome with something close to wonder. It was written on sheepskin and was more than seven hundred and fifty years old. Cautiously he opened it at random.

  Trinitas, Sother, Messias, Emmanuel, Sabahot, Adonay, Athanatos ... The words crawled across the page. There was a diagram of a magic circle.

  Mr Ho was hovering anxiously by his shoulder. ‘Is it what you wish, Mr Brimstone?’

  It was what he wished all right. Exactly the grimoire Beleth had told him to find—the ultimate black book of the Analogue Realm, the most diabolical work of dark magic ever circulated. And written by a Pope! He turned another page. He would have to study it very carefully.

  ‘This is perfect, Mr Ho,’ he said. ‘But in addition, I shall want a large sheet of virgin parchment.’

  ‘I have it,’ Ho said. ‘You shall have it.’

  ‘And a black cockerel.’

  ‘I can get it,’ Ho said. ‘You shall get it.’

  ‘Three pints of human blood.’

  ‘Which group, Mr Brimstone?’

  Brimstone blinked. ‘Group?’

  ‘Which blood group do you need, Mr Brimstone. They will ask me when I buy it for you from the Blood Bank.’

  They had Blood Banks in the Analogue Realm? How very sensible. Saved all the bother of finding a victim. Might be a business worth starting at home.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said to Ho, ‘so long as it’s fresh.’

  ‘Consider it yours, Mr Brimstone! Anything else?’

  ‘A private room to study this fascinating text, Mr Ho.’

  ‘At once, Mr Brimstone.’

  ‘And a place to carry out the working. Say tomorrow, or the day after.’

  ‘An abandoned church, Mr Brimstone, with its graveyard intact? I noticed one for sale in the property section. A short taxi ride from the city.’

  ‘Admirable,’ said Brimstone.

  Ho waved the card and smiled. ‘All on American Express, Mr Brimstone?’

  It never ceased to astonish him how people in the Analogue World imagined a ridiculous little bit of plastic had the same value as gold. Brimstone smiled. ‘All on American Express, Mr Ho,’ he confirmed.

  Seventy-Five

  ‘I want to show you something, Jasper,’ Hairstreak said. He was beaming smugly—one of his least pleasant expressions.

  ‘Yes, of course, Your Lordship,’ Chalkhill said, trying desperately to look interested.

  Hairstreak stood. ‘Come with us, Cossus,’ he invited.

  The Gatekeeper bowed his head slightly and the three of them left the chamber. Chalkhill’s nerves were getting to him badly, but at least they were leaving that ghastly golem behind.

  Hairstreak took them down several winding sets of stairs and Chalkhill’s nervousness increased as he realised where they were going. This was clearly the dungeon area of the mansion—cells surrounding a central torture chamber in the classical great-house design. You could never tell with Hairstreak. He could be all smiles one minute and the next you were on the rack with a red-hot poker cooling in your —

  Hairstreak took a key from a hook on the wall, opened a cell door, then stood back. Chalkhill approached more nervously still. The cell was small, dark and windowless and there was a smell coming out of it as if something had died in there. Was this how it would end? It was his own fault, of course. He never should have listened to that stupid worm.

  Chalkhill swallowed. ‘Your Lordship —’ he began. Then stopped. There was already somebody in the cell, a crumpled figure squatting by one wall. It was, Chalkhill realised, the source of the smell.

  ‘Recognise anyone?’ asked Hairstreak cheerfully.

  Chalkhill had no idea what he meant, then realised he was talking about the figure in the cell. Chalkhill risked peering a little more closely. It was obviously some elderly derelict, a criminal perhaps, or more likely somebody who had crossed Hairstreak at some point and now faced a daily routine of torture, starvation and sleep deprivation. But who it was Chalkhill could not say. He suspected that didn’t matter: Hairstreak was probably just showing what happened to anyone who irritated him—a little psychological pressure before the accusation of treachery. Why, oh why, had he listened to the worm?

  ‘No?’ asked Hairstreak. ‘Hold your head up!’

  For a moment Chalkhill thought Hairstreak was talking to him, then the wretched creature in the cell straightened slowly. Chalkhill caught his breath with an audible gasp. He was looking into the pain-soaked eyes of Apatura Iris, the late lamented Purple Emperor.

  ‘Recognise him now?’ Hairstreak asked.

  Chalkhill nodded wordlessly.

  ‘That’s the reason you’re here, Jasper. Strange are the ways of fate.’

  Chalkhill glanced at Cossus, who stared back at him expressionlessly. He looked down at the floor. He didn’t want to look at the Purple Emperor again, who was a truly horrific sight, and he was afraid to look at Hairstreak.

  ‘You understand what’s happened here?’ Hairstreak said.

  Chalkhill shook his head without looking up.

  ‘This is a resurrection!’ Hairstreak snapped. ‘Any fool can see the signs of a resurrection.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Chalkhill mumbled. ‘I mean, I assumed it was a resurrection ...’ The trouble with Hairstreak was you never knew what he was talking about until it was too late. By that stage you were either in deep trouble or dead. Chalkhill just managed to suppress a desperate little whine.

  ‘That’s the proble
m, isn’t it?’ Hairstreak said. ‘One look and you know.’ He pulled a short wand from the inside pocket of his jacket and used it to poke the figure in the cell. The Purple Emperor cringed away from him. ‘You see? We’re claiming Apatura never died at all. We’re saying he went into a coma, but that he’s woken up now and he’s fit to make decisions on the future of the Realm. We’ve got away with it so far because we’ve kept him hidden most of the time, only gave a few people a glimpse of him, but do you think our story will stand up when he has to make a public appearance?’

  What did Hairstreak want him to say? The wrong word here could mean jail or death or torture or … Chalkhill looked desperately at Cossus again, who was still no help. His gaze was drawn to Hairstreak like a songbird fascinated by a snake.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And … no.’ He waited, stomach tight and bowels loose.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Hairstreak said impatiently. ‘He’d be spotted as a resurrection in a trice. And since resurrection is illegal, any proclamation he might make would be illegal too. Let me tell you, Jasper, we of the Night may have made some gains in the last few days, but we shall not hold them unless we do something about this problem.’

  ‘What problem?’ Chalkhill asked.

  ‘It would be in your interests to listen more carefully,’ Hairstreak said sourly. He stared gloomily at the huddled shape of the Emperor. ‘You know there’s only one thing that will fix this, of course.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘A wyrm, you idiot! Specifically a mature wyrm transfer!’

  Chalkhill wondered what a mature wyrm transfer was, but thought it safer not to ask. Instead he gave a vacant smile of encouragement to Hairstreak and nodded vigorously.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

  Hairstreak sighed. ‘Really, Jasper, if you didn’t occasionally prove of some minuscule value, I’d have fed you to the sliths by now.’

  ‘It’s just —’ Chalkhill hesitated. ‘It’s just … well, I don’t quite see how I … ah … actually might, well, fit in, Your Lordship.’

  To his astonishment, Hairstreak smiled. ‘It’s not so much you fitting in, Jasper, it’s more your wyrm fitting in. Fitting into the Emperor, that is. I’ve brought you here so we can transplant Cyril, your experienced wangaramas.’

  Seventy-Six

  ‘We can’t go north,’ Nymph said. ‘Don’t you remember Ziczac said there was a forcefield?’

  ‘North’s blocked, Blue,’ Comma said helpfully. If he was worried about their situation, it didn’t show.

  ‘Humour me,’ Blue grunted shortly. She led them back along the corridor and they passed without difficulty beyond the point where Ziczac was stopped. Blue turned to face the others. ‘The forcefield was just a device to send us south, so someone would trigger the spiked pit. Once the trap was triggered, the forcefield switched off automatically. It’s standard game protocol. If you don’t know about it, you assume you can’t get north, jump the open trap and head south—where there are even more dangerous traps waiting.’

  ‘So north will be easier?’

  ‘Not much,’ Blue admitted, ‘but according to the rules of the game we’re supposed to have some chance of surviving this way. South we’d have had no chance at all.’

  ‘How do we know your Lord Hairstreak kept to the rules when he designed the maze?’ Nymph asked.

  Blue glared. ‘We don’t. But do you have a better way to play it?’

  If this kept going they’d come to blows soon, Pyrgus thought. He moved to defuse the tension by stepping forward with a smile he didn’t feel. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we’re all in this together. We’ve lost a good man because we didn’t know right away what was happening. But we know we’re in an obsidian maze now and that gives us a chance. The other thing is that we’re a team. These mazes are designed for just one victim. If we pull together and stick together, we can beat this thing.’ He looked directly at the two forest soldiers with Nymph and realised he didn’t even know their names. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to call you.’

  ‘Ochlodes,’ one told him.

  ‘Palaemon,’ said the other.

  ‘Ochlodes, Palaemon,’ Pyrgus said, ‘you have already proved yourselves fine fighters on this mission. We may well be called on to fight again before we get out of this maze, but it’s even more important to use your head and take care—most of the dangers here are from traps.’ He looked at Nymph, Blue and Comma. ‘That goes for you three as well—think before you do anything, take it slow and never assume anything is what it seems.’

  After a moment, Blue said, ‘I’d suggest we spread out. Spread out, but keep an eye on each other. That way if one of us does get caught in a trap, the others aren’t likely to get caught as well, so we can help one another.’

  ‘That’s good strategic thinking, Princess Royal,’ Nymph said with sincerity. Blue favoured her with a frosty little smile.

  They separated out as far as space would allow, then cautiously began to move north up the corridor. They had gone no more than fifty yards before a swiftly spinning blade emerged from a side wall to slice the lobe from Palaemon’s ear.

  If he hadn’t had the preternatural reflexes of a Forest Faerie, it would have cut his throat.

  Seventy-Seven

  ‘I’m worried about the kid,’ Fogarty said suddenly.

  ‘Henry?’

  ‘No—Pyrgus. I’m worried about him,’ Fogarty said. ‘It’s taking too long.’

  ‘You think so, deeah?’

  ‘The theory was they slip into the palace, grab their father and slip out again. How long does that take?’

  ‘Perhaps longer than one might imagine,’ said Madame Cardui. ‘The palace is a substantial building. Pyrgus has to find his father before he can rescue him.’

  ‘I’m not sure they’re still at the palace,’ Fogarty said. ‘I’m not even sure the Purple Emperor is at the palace.’

  ‘Pyrgus said he saw his father at a window when they were forced to leave.’

  ‘Pyrgus said he thought he saw his father at the window,’ Fogarty corrected her. ‘But even if he was right, that doesn’t mean his father stayed there.’ He leaned forward. ‘In a case like this, you have to figure out what your enemy is thinking. Emperor Apatura isn’t himself now. He’s under orders from Hairstreak. On his own, the Emperor would stay at the palace. But would Hairstreak want him to stay at the palace?’

  ‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense—would he?’

  ‘I don’t think he would,’ Fogarty said. ‘I wouldn’t. I’m trying to tell the world the old Emperor is sound of body and mind, but just happens to want me to take over ruling the empire. People will never buy that if they see Apatura wandering about like a zombie. If I were Hairstreak, I’d hide him away at my own place.’

  After a moment, Madame Cardui said, ‘Lord Hairstreak has two places: a home in the city and the other—’ She stopped, looking at him.

  ‘The other one’s somewhere in this forest,’ Fogarty finished for her. ‘He’d never take the Emperor to the place in the city—far too public.’

  They looked at one another.

  ‘Why didn’t you say this before?’ Madame Cardui asked.

  ‘I didn’t think of it before,’ Fogarty said sourly.

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  Fogarty said, ‘I think I’ll go and talk to the Queen.’

  Seventy-Eight

  The short taxi ride turned out to be a long taxi ride, but the driver took American Express. Brimstone stared up at the church he’d just bought with a rising feeling of delight. It was perfect. Derelict. Isolated. Surrounded by trees to guarantee a little privacy. And, as Mr Ho had promised, an ancient graveyard all around it. One or two of the graves had fresh flowers, which suggested there might be recent corpses available. Not that he was likely to need them. According to his grimoire, you could do without them in the Analogue Realm.

  ‘Be so good as to carry my bags inside,’ he told the taxi
driver grandly.

  ‘Bug off,’ said the taxi driver, scowling. He was sweaty and overweight with an offensive body odour.

  Brimstone grinned at him benignly. He opened the bag Beleth had given him and extracted one of the ridiculous pieces of paper that served as coinage in this world. (They passed paper around and pretended it was money! That was even sillier than the little plastic card.) The number 100 was printed on the front, which meant people believed they could exchange it for one hundred … for one hundred … for one hundred what? Brimstone actually wasn’t sure. Sheep? Cows? Gold bars? The weird thing was it didn’t matter. People just kept collecting them to pass around again.

  Brimstone waved the paper under the taxi driver’s smelly nose. ‘Be so good as to carry my bags inside and I shall give you this!’

  The driver’s surly look disappeared and he scrambled from his cab. ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

  The church had been deconsecrated according to Mr Ho, but otherwise left to rot. There were rows of broken woodwormed pews, broken stained-glass windows, broken statuary in mouldy niches, broken floor tiles and, best of all, a dusty altar. There was even a threadbare altar-cloth in silver and gold.

  Brimstone dragged his luggage from the vestibule where the driver had left it, locked the front door again and settled down to unpack. The job he had to do for Beleth could take some time, so best to get started as soon as possible. He checked the grimoire, then walked up to the altar. He understood what he had to do. It was a mental preparation, designed to put him in the proper frame of mind.

  Standing alone before the altar of the broken-down, deconsecrated church, Silas Brimstone began to confess his sins aloud.

  It would, he thought, take quite some time.

  They said it was a preparation room, but Chalkhill wasn’t fooled for a minute. The furniture was minimal, the door was locked. He was in a holding-pen—a cell by any other name—to keep him safe until the hideous surgery. Worse still, Cyril had woken up again.