A Hard Day's Knight n-11

by Simon R. Green

  She turned abruptly to face me, fixing me with her intense golden stare. “If any other mortal had insulted me in this way, John Taylor, I would have ripped the meat from his bones with my own bare hands for such effrontery. But you have brought me a face I never thought to see again. That buys you some time. I am ... intrigued. Arthur’s presence changes everything. Yes, I will parley.”

  “You sent the elves into the Nightside, didn’t you?” I said.

  “Youngbloods,” said Queen Mab. “They wanted so much to prove themselves in battle, and who was I to deny youth its chance?”

  “Most of them are dead now,” said Kae. “The London Knights hold the survivors captive. Their continued survival depends upon your good behaviour.”

  “Kill them all,” said Mab. “Let them all die, for failing me. I am Mab; and I will do what I will do.”

  I decided to press on, while she was still in what passed for a good mood. I raised my gift again and sent it searching; and this time I found King Oberon and Queen Titania in their Unseelie Court, in Shadows Fall. I found another connection and opened up another gateway; and more light fell into the Nightside as I connected one hidden place with another.

  Oberon and Titania sat side by side on two great Thrones made of bones. Strange shapes and sigils and glyphs had been cut deep into the hundreds of interlinked bones that made up the two Thrones, detail upon detail, in a design complex beyond hope of human understanding. Oberon was easily ten feet tall and bulging thickly with muscles, wrapped in a long blood-red cloak to better show off his milk-white skin. His hair was a colourless blond, hanging loosely down around a long, angular face dominated by piercing blue eyes. He looked effortlessly noble, regal, and perversely intelligent. Oberon had come to his Throne through intrigue and violence, and it showed.

  Titania wore a long black dress with silver trimmings, and wore it with a careless, heart-breaking elegance. She was lovelier than any mere mortal would ever be, and she knew it, and didn’t give a damn. She was a few inches taller than Oberon, with a skin so pale that blue veins showed clearly at her temples. Her hair was blonde, cropped short and severe, and her night-dark eyes were calm and cold.

  Nobility hung about them both, like a cape grown frayed through long use.

  “We know you, John Taylor,” said Oberon, in calm, bored voice. “Why do you trouble us?”

  “King Arthur’s back,” I said briskly. “That’s him, right there. Isn’t he marvellous? He and his knights have kicked the crap out of the elves Queen Mab sent to devastate the Nightside. He has asked her to parley, to find a way to avoid the forthcoming elf civil war, and she has agreed. He now asks you to parley, in the same cause, and swears he has another, viable option to propose.”

  “There still exist ancient pacts, of honour and blood, between the Unseelie Court and Camelot,” said Arthur. “Tell me the elves have not forgotten honour.”

  “No,” said Oberon. “The elves still remember honour.”

  “But what if we do not want peace?” said Titania. She did not move at all, her rich and sultry voice seeming to hang on the air.

  “Would you rather face extinction?” I said. “You know that once the war has started, you’d all fight to the end, to the very last of your forces, rather than admit defeat. You’d use any tactic, any weapon, die to the very last elf and take all Humanity and the Earth with you, before you’d let your hated rival win. Arthur is offering you a way out—a way for the elves to survive as a race, with honour. And if you can’t trust King Arthur of Camelot, whom can you trust?”

  Oberon smiled slightly. “Why not? If nothing else, this process should prove ... illuminating. I see you, Mab. What say you, to this offer of parley, and a possible solution to our dispute?”

  “No-one summons me anywhere,” said Mab. She turned her unblinking gaze on Arthur. “You don’t have Merlin any more. And without him, your forces failed at Logres.”

  “Who needs Merlin?” I said. “We have Arthur and the London Knights, and I can call upon the Lord of Thorns, Jessica Sorrow the Unbeliever, and Razor Eddie, Punk God of the Straight Razor. I could even give the Droods a call ... Do you really want to fight one more useless battle; or shall we try something different for a change?”

  “If a suitable neutral ground can be found and agreed on,” said Mab, “I will attend. But only because it has been such a long time since I have seen you, Arthur. One does miss ... old friends.”

  I turned back to Oberon and Titania, in their Court at Shadows Fall. But before either of them could speak, another figure appeared suddenly from behind the two Thrones of bone, a face I already knew. A short, stocky figure, almost human-sized, though the sheer scale of the King and Queen made him appear smaller. His body was as smooth and supple as a dancer’s, but the hump on his back pushed one shoulder down and forward, and the hand on that arm was withered into a claw. His hair was grey, his skin the yellow of old bone, and he had two raised nubs on his forehead that might have been horns. He wore a pelt of animal fur that melded seamlessly into his own hairy body, and his legs ended in cloven hoofs. He smiled a lot, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile.

  I knew him. He had led me a merry dance across the Nightside, all to protect a Peace Treaty he never had any faith in. He brought me Excalibur. He was Puck, the only elf that was not perfect.

  He lounged artlessly against the arm of Titania’s Throne, and she patted his head fondly as he grinned out of the opening in the air.

  “And so the call to parley comes, from an old and yet respected human King; and who are we to say no to such a courteous summons? I say, let us go, and talk, for talk is cheap and therefore costs us nothing. After all, nothing shall be decided, nor considered binding, unless both Courts agree on it. And how likely is that?”

  “Dear Puck,” said Queen Mab. “Still so wise and so provoking.”

  “Let’s do it,” said King Oberon. “For the hell of it. It has been so dreadfully dull round here, lately.”

  “But no more than us,” said Queen Titania. “Just us, and no-one else.”

  “Of course,” said Queen Mab. “We might want to say and admit things our people would never approve of.” She looked at me. “Assuming, again, that you can find a neutral ground where we cannot be overheard. And how likely is that?”

  “Oh, I’ve got somewhere in mind,” I said. “Somewhere that will impress even the King and Queens of Faerie. Certainly a place where I can guarantee no-one will overhear you.”

  And driven by the anger that still hadn’t let go of me, I raised my gift again and found the place I’d been thinking of. I used my Portable Timeslip to transport Oberon and Titania and Puck, Arthur and Kae, Mab, Suzie, and myself out of the Nightside and into the future. To the Nightside at the end of the world, the devastated future that I had helped to bring about.

  Everyone looked round, startled at their sudden arrival. They hadn’t known I could do that, and until I tried, neither had I. I was deathly tired, all the energy gone out of me, and my head pulsed with a sick pain. Overusing my gift has its price. Suzie was quickly at my side, so I could lean on her if I needed to, without anyone else noticing. I forced myself to stand upright and smile unconcernedly about me. I couldn’t be weak now, not when so much depended on me. Not when I still had so much left to do.

  Arthur and Kae moved instinctively to stand back-to-back, staring wildly about them. Oberon and Titania and Mab had also moved together, perhaps for mutual support. And while they towered over us mere mortals, the stark and terrible setting they found themselves in made the elves seem smaller. There’s nothing like the end of the world for putting things in perspective.

  I had brought them to a dark place, where the Moon was gone from the night sky, and only a handful of stars still gleamed dully. For as far as any of us could see, the Nightside lay in ruins, broken buildings and scattered rubble, endless silence and a bone-piercing cold. Smashed and abandoned vehicles littered the empty streets, but there were no bodies, anywhere. I could have told them
why, told them what happened to all the bodies; but they wouldn’t have thanked me for the knowledge. What light there was came from distant glares and strange lights out in the ruins. The night had a purple cast, as though it were bruised. We all looked round sharply, as some great shape raised itself briefly on the horizon, then it was gone again.

  “What the hell was that?” said Arthur. “John, what is this place? Where in God’s name have you brought us?”

  “Not so much where, as when,” I said. “This is the future of the Nightside, and London, and Earth. Or, at least, one of its many possible futures. I’ve done everything I can to make this future as unlikely as possible; but the fact that it’s still here suggests it’s not utterly impossible. Nothing lives here now, except the insects. This ... is the end of everything.”

  I let them look round some more, let the cold seep into their bones and into their souls. Arthur and Kae were clearly horrified, and even the elves couldn’t help looking impressed. Oberon and Titania held each other’s hands, Mab drew herself up to her full height, and even the Puck had stopped smiling. I could have told them that I was responsible for all this: that this was the world I murdered, in one future time-line. But I didn’t. I didn’t want them distracted from the main issue.

  “Welcome to the future,” I said, harshly, and they all looked back at me. “This is what the world will look like when all the wars are over.”

  “Am I back in Hell?” said Mab. “Such desolation of the spirit ...”

  “This is a dead world,” said Puck. “There is no life here, only ... things like life.”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “When we’ve all finished killing each other, the monsters will still remain. Listen.”

  From far off in the distance came the sound of living things as big as houses, moving slowly and dragging themselves through the purple twilight. Enormous silhouettes appeared briefly upon the broken horizon, and something far too huge went stalking between the nearby buildings, tottering on great stilt-like legs, pulling down stonework where it brushed against decaying structures. Something impossibly large rose suddenly, blocking off our view of the horizon. It made a series of loud, wet, sucking noises, and lurched towards us.

  “You’d better do something about that,” I said. “It sounds hungry.”

  Oberon and Titania and Mab raised their hands and chanted together, and immediately a shimmering protective circle rose, spreading out to fill all the open space round us. A pale blue-white glare from the screens replaced the bruised purple, and the advancing shape slammed to a halt, some distance from the shimmering screen. It stayed where it was, utterly still, watching from the shadows. It gave the impression that it could wait forever, or at least until the screen went down. Out in the darkness, other great shapes were heading our way, attracted by the light.

  “Nice work,” I said to the elves. “You see what you can do, when you work together? I do love these simple life lessons. Of course, the screens won’t last. Nothing lasts, here. And there are things out there that can break through anything, eventually.”

  Even as I spoke, a great dark shape slammed up against the shield, on our blind side. What details of the thing I could see made no sense at all. All the shapes were monsters, things left behind because they were too big to be killed by anything except each other. More of them came forward, slapping and grating against the shimmering fields, desperate to get in, to get at us. Driven by many appetites, of which hunger was only one. They wanted to do awful things to us, simply because we were sane and normal and alive. Because we made them remember when the world was not as it had become.

  I didn’t have to tell any of the others this. They could feel it. I could see it in their faces.

  “This is what the world will look like,” I said, “when all the wars are over and done with. This is what you would inherit after your civil war, Your Elven Majesties. But this is only one possible future, one possible Earth. There are many others, a whole infinity of possibilities. Tell them, Arthur.”

  King Arthur had to swallow hard before he could speak, but when he finally did, his voice was calm and reasonable.

  “I can offer you another Earth, a new Earth, where Man and Elf never happened. A whole new start, for all the elves. Why fight over our Earth, already overrun by Man and his civilisation, and risk ending up in this future, when you could move to this new world I offer, and never have to see Humanity again? It is a wild fine place I offer you, rich with beasts and birds and possibilities. You could flourish there.”

  Oberon and Titania nodded slowly. “For all that elves do love a feud and delight in slaughter, in the name of honour ... the needs of the race come first. We are suffocating at Shadows Fall, and it is known to us that the elves are dying out in the Sundered Lands. There is something in us that is bound to the Earth and will not let us thrive anywhere else. We will forgo our ancient enmity and make peace among our kind, in return for a new Earth. What say you, Mab?”

  We all looked at her. She smiled slowly. “You tore me from my Throne and threw me down into Hell. I had to claw my way back, through many sacrifices. You expect me to forget all that?”

  “Yes,” said Titania. “In the name of the race. Mab, in this new world ... there could be children again.”

  “I will not give up my hate,” said Mab. “It’s all I have.”

  “Still clinging to the past, Mab?” said Titania. “That always was your failing. That’s why you lost the war against Humanity and why we had to replace you. Because you cared nothing for the future.”

  “Because you never got over what happened in the past,” said Oberon. “Will you risk the continuation of our race over the memory of one dead man?”

  “He loved me! He truly loved me!” Mab towered over us, radiant with rage. “The only one who ever did; and the elves killed him for it. Let them all suffer, as I have suffered.”

  “You could have children again, on this new Earth,” said Titania. “Have you forgotten how sweet it is, to bear a child?”

  “I would sacrifice any elf that ever was, or might be, before I will give up my righteous anger,” said Mab. “Nothing else matters.”

  “All this, for revenge?” said Oberon.

  “For honour!” Mab sneered at him openly. “I am the last of the first-born elves. All who came after were smaller things, with smaller emotions. You were never worthy of us. Let the war come. Those who survive will have been made pure again, through blood and sacrifice. And I will rule them.”

  “And risk this?” said Arthur, gesturing around him. “What point could there be in winning if all you inherit is this?”

  “I will do what I will do,” said Queen Mab. “Nothing else matters.”

  “There was a time when something else mattered,” said a cheerful, bright, and jaunty voice. “When someone else mattered, sweetest Mab.”

  We all looked round sharply at the new voice, and there, striding towards us, was a tall well-built young man, wrapped in a heavy bearskin cloak and simple cloth leggings. He had a broad, open face and an infectious smile, and a shock of red hair under a traditional Scottish cap. He came forward to join us, grinning widely, and Mab ... let out a single low, shocked sound. Arthur started forward, and Kae stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “Is this your doing?” Suzie whispered in my ear. I shook my head.

  “Dear sweet God,” said Arthur. “How can this be? Tam ... Tam O’Shanter, as ever was. You died even before I did. Has some dear magic brought you back, too?”

  Tam O’Shanter laughed happily, his eyes fixed on Queen Mab. He stopped before her, cocked his head slightly to one side, and planted both fists on his hips. He looked so alive, so full of life, ready to take on the whole world and bend it to his wishes, for the fun of it.

  “Why, this is the land of the dead. Where else should I be? I was needed, so here I am, to see my sweet Mab again. Ah, my bonny lass, how fine you look. Even if I did have to stand on a stool to kiss you, in the old days. It is your need that bri
ngs me here, sweet lass, to this dark place. Are you still so mad at all who live because I died, and left you alone? Poor Mab, we could never have had long together, no matter how things worked out. Because it is the fate of every man to grow old and die, and you are an elf. That’s why our love was forbidden, among Men and elves.”

  “I would have found a way,” said Mab. “I would have kept you with me forever. I will never stop hating and hurting the world that took you from me.”

  “Then hold me, my love,” said Tam O’Shanter. “Hold me as you once did, when the world was young, and so were we.”

  He stepped forward and opened his arms, and Mab stepped into them without hesitation, and hugged him fiercely to her. For the first time, she looked happy. She kept on smiling, even when Tam’s hand came up with a long knife in it, slid it smoothly between her ribs, and twisted it. Golden blood ran down her side, but she never made a sound. She hung on to him, her eyes closed. He pulled the blade out, and golden blood coursed down her side and spattered on the ground. And then, as though only the blade had been holding her up, she fell suddenly to her knees. Still clinging to her dead love. Her head fell forward on his chest, and he patted her hair fondly before pushing her away from him. Queen Mab fell awkwardly to the ground and lay still. Tam O’Shanter looked down at her, the bloody knife still in his hand. And then he put aside the glamour he’d worn and was himself again.

  “Sorry, Mother,” said Puck. “But I did owe you that, for making me the way I am. And what better glamour to deceive you than the father I never knew? You should have died when he did and saved us all so much suffering.”

  He looked up and smiled into our shocked faces.

  “It’s what she would have wanted. She could never give up. She didn’t know how. So I have put her out of her misery, and ours. Now she’s gone, all the elves must bow down to King Oberon and Queen Titania, by right of succession. The elves are one people again, with no need of civil war. I must thank you, John Taylor, for making this possible. No-one else could have brought us all together.”