“But this elf,” said one, his voice nearly identical to that of the first, “what’s he doing with her? Madrigal ent interested in no elves. I say they spies and we kills ‘em.” He whipped out a knife and started towards Zal.
“Spies, spies, flies in yet eyes,” said a sudden loud and arrogant voice from beside Lila’s ear. She felt the imp grab his usual painful hold and felt his flames flutter against her hair. “You stupid wormshits. Killin’ them won’t get you nothin’. Alive for a prize and dead is dead ever.”
“A demon!” grunted the nearest jack. “Spies it is, then.” He grinned and hummed to himself, but he didn’t move forwards. They all looked at Thingamajig and narrowed their eyes, as if they were moved by one spirit.
“More to the point,” Lila said coldly. “If you harm anyone I will fill you full of the coldest iron you have ever felt,” and she spun both her short swords with a flourish that finished with them becoming .44 magnum handguns.
All the jacks were armed with iron themselves, and in the course of the few minutes that had passed Lila had realised that this was simply because the only thing that faery magic could not deflect was this particular kind of metal. They didn’t touch it themselves however—every blade was stuck in a grip of something much more prosaic and safe, and all were carried in scabbards when not in use.
She took the moment of quiet that followed and added, “Let him go now, or I’ll do it anyway.” After Sorcha she had no trouble meaning it or making herself understood.
A soft mist began to form around the jacks and it thickened with intent now, rising from the ground around their feet. She saw them rubbing their fingertips, lips moving in some little chant she couldn’t be bothered to analyse.
“We can take him, come back for her later…” she heard one of them snicker behind her.
“Sadly for you,” she said into the greying, clouding air, “I don’t need to see you with my eyes to kill you.”
She took out the ones holding Zal first, each one in the forehead. One of her bullets grazed Zal’s cheek and temple with a friction burn but it was at least half a mil wide of actually striking him. The others were easier, because she had no fear of missing at all. She turned on her heels, languidly, barely conscious of moving. Within a few seconds there was silence and the fitful cold wind blowing spotting rain at them and clearing the fug.
Zal wrenched free of his half-tied hands, bent down to recover his own dagger from a dead hand, and sliced off his gag. He spat it out with revulsion and ground it into the mud with his foot. “No guessing this isn’t the surface world,” he said with feeling, touching his cheek and wincing slightly. “Nice shooting.”
“Ammo’s low,” she said, calculating the likely bodycount if this was any example to go by. “Have to do better with something else next time. Ugh, in fact…” and she went over to where the closest jack lay and examined his head. There wasn’t a lot left of it, and certainly no bullet.
She switched on a magnetic detection field in her feet and started walking around glumly, searching the ground. It was soft and full of water—a good stopping consistency, thankfully. After a short time she got on her knees and began to dig.
“You’re kidding me!” the imp said, shivering.
“Do you see my backpack?” she asked.
“No.”
“That’s where the spare clips are.”
“Can’t you make ‘em?”
“Not so as I’m aware,” she pulled her arm out of a narrow hole and shook sludgy brown earth off the heavy little lipstick shape of the slug. “But if I have to I’ll try. Meanwhile, no sense wasting them.”
Inside her chest she felt the feathery tickle of necromancer laughter. Tath didn’t need to ask her to touch bodies now—and as she went over each one she felt him surge down her arms and out the tips of her fingers into the ice cold flesh of the dead faeries—it seemed they didn’t need to be warm like a human in order to survive. These were not bloody and red either. They were brown, muddy things, slippery jellyfish, boned with wood. As she moved around them they were already falling apart and becoming sludge.
Jrn me, next time, Tath said. These Piave lots ofjuice.
She gave him the equivalent of an internal nod. Whatever revulsions she used to feel about his business were gone for now. If he needed power, let him have it. She needed him, or likely would.
Beware though, he continued softly, as if there was someone to overhear. This much aether in a corpse means you are far, far into the land of Faery. No wonder they were surprised to find you. But also, easy to find you. Everything here is touched with aether. It will all be saying where you are. And whoever the master is here, they will now he sure you are enemy, missing as they are twenty-five or six of their fellows. Playing along might have been wiser.
I don’t do wiser, Lila said bluntly, fishing through skull debris only to find this bullet had struck part of a buckle on the creature’s back and bent itself out of shape. She put it in her pocket anyway. I used to think I had some shot at it, but that was before yesterday. From now on you can officially consider the Wisdom Bus a suspended service.
Zal searched the remains for other things. She saw him slip stuff into the bag on his belt but didn’t ask about it the same way she didn’t ask about his change of demeanour. His charisma had changed from bright to dark, movements quick, efficient, and ruthless. His stories of earlier times had seemed far-fetched to her, but now she saw where the grit that informed the most raw of his songs had come from. In Otopia he was lighthearted, in Demonia seriously foolish, but here he was focused anew, and it was not a settling sight or thing to be around. In his presence she had felt only good things, even the tensions between them had been exciting in a charming way. Here his charm was filled with deadly intent and she was chilled and thrilled by it equally. But she was glad of that. Her own inner cold couldn’t have withstood his bright side, not after last night’s discoveries. They were united in their grimness and that, in its peculiar way, was glorious. Two killers.
From the leader Zal took the clasp that had held his cape shut. It was bronze, fashioned into the rough shape of a horse. Lila turned over a piece of skull with antler attached and then, around the thing’s neck, saw a strange glint. She turned aside a piece of cloth and found herself staring at a leather neck thong bearing the unmistakably manufactured shape of a dull aluminium ring pull, circa 1970.
Zal came and looked over her shoulder, and snorted, “Otherworldly metal. Strong protection from missiles.” He gazed at the remains a moment longer. “Well… your shot is off centre about two centimetres, so I guess it worked as best it could.”
Thingamajig danced on her shoulder, aiming his forefinger and thumb at the dead fey and shooting. “Heh!” he said repeatedly, jittering, until Lila swatted him off her shoulder. “Hey!”
She straightened up after finding the last bullet and looked around. The grey sky was getting greyer. “Any ideas? Malachi said not to go anywhere.”
“But somewhere found us anyway,” Zal said, giving the corpses a final look. “I say we move. Pretty fast too. Open ground out here, and night coming.” He sounded uncertain however, as though he had no faith in running.
She scanned—no signs of where anything like a civilisation might be.
“I’m with Long Ears,” the imp said, wiping muddy claws on a patch of tough grass he’d found.
Lila took a step forward.
“Only, not that way…” Thingamajig suddenly leapt back up her leg like a monkey and onto the top of her head. He stood on tiptoe, hand shading his eyes as his toe claws yanked her hair. “I have a nasty feeling about that way. The mountain there… it has a horribly familiar cast to it, like the gleam in a little old lady’s glass eye just before she trips you up and shoves you in the oven. Let’s go the other way.”
She turned…
“Not that way either,” the imp said definitively. “Jacks came from that way.”
“He’s right,” Zal pointed at the blood-spatte
red tracks here and there among the tussocks.
“Just fucking decide!” Lila snapped, seeing her breath suddenly fog. The grass around them whitened with frost and became black.
The imp pointed. Zal pointed. They pointed in opposite directions.
“Wait a second,” Zal said. “Which way did you turn around just then?”
“I don’t know… this way…” she said and started but his hand stopped her.
“No left turns,” he said.
“The other way feels… hard…” She couldn’t explain it but it did. Nonetheless, she turned right around. “Will that undo it?”
He shrugged, blew, his breath like hers. “Cold doesn’t change. Let’s go.”
“I liked my direction better,” the imp grumbled, swinging down through her tangled hair onto her shoulder once again.
“My direction has standing stones in it,” Zal said, huffing with cold. He wasn’t dressed for severe weather.
Lila scanned, but only on the highest magnification could she make out anything that might have been such objects. “How do you know?”
He pointed at his eyes with forked fingers and then pointed the fingers out and around. “Magical creature in a magical world,” he said. “For once I win.”
She jogged a step to catch up to his side. “I like it when you win.”
He bent briefly and kissed her head, avoiding the imp with easy grace. She glowed inwardly at the gesture, tasted lemon, and with it the fiercely pleasurably memories of the weeks they’d shared before this debacle, and after the wedding.
“So, who were those guys?” she asked, when they had covered about half a mile but had made no visible ground on the hills ahead.
“Some kind of country and forest spirits, I think,” Zal said. “But only traces. Did you see, they all had almost the same look to them.”
“Like clones.”
“Yes. I think they were only echoes of a primary fey, or something like that. They’re related to the Hunt.”
“The Hunt—Malachi said something about that. He thought we had to look for one, to get the Mothkin, something like that anyway.”
“And now we’ve slaughtered some of it,” he said. “So that’ll take some explaining.”
“They started it,” she said. “I just walked out of my room, they were the ones who decided to pounce and take us dead or alive.”
“True,” he said. “I wonder who Jack is. It’s a common faery name. Maybe some local big shot. Faery is all about local big shorting, far as I understand it.”
The imp mumbled and agreeing sound. “Used to be different,” he said. “Once there was a queen and a king all the way up and down. Not ‘ny more. Bandit stuff now.”
“What happened to the King and Queen?” Lila asked.
“They argued,” the imp said, going quiet.
“There must be more to it than that,” she objected but he refused to be drawn and the elves didn’t know the answer. Zal only said, “It was a long time ago. Nobody talks about it. The faeries put their magic down after, because of whatever happened.”
“Put it Under?” Lila asked.
Zal nodded. “Something like that. Faery is only half the place it used to be since then, and faeries have only half their power.”
“Don’t they want it back?”
“Some of them, no doubt,” he said and speeded up the pace. Soon they were jogging and, shortly afterwards, running at a reasonable clip downhill into the first small dips of undulating ground where the hills began.
They were moving along something that looked like a little track, had been following it for a short while in fact, when they stopped as one.
They were standing in a wood of slender, black trees, sparsely scattered across snowy hills. The track remained the same shape and their footprints were still there on it. The trees had not suddenly appeared either. It was more as if they had always been there, but it wasn’t until now that they’d noticed them. Lila looked back without turning and trees covered the path. Overhead their spindly branches scratched at the lowering white sky where snow could clearly be seen blowing high in the sky, without falling. There was no sign of the open moor they had just been running across. She glanced at Zal and he at her, to confirm that both of them felt the same at the same moment.
“That’s something,” Zal said quietly, his ear tips moving all around in a way that might have looked comical on a less obviously warlike person.
The imp made an uncomfortable sound.
“What is it?” Lila asked.
Then she was quiet as they all listened to the new sound of thumping—a hoofed animal of some size approaching. It sounded like it came from the west, then the east, then north, then south, then all directions at once. With a breath of warm air the frost melted leaving them wet and surrounded by dripping. A flock of grey birds came and settled in trees nearby, but as Lila tried to look more closely they took off, wheeled around, and settled further away. Still they stood, not exactly frightened, and then, as she turned back to look the way they were going, Lila got the shock of her life as she realised she was looking into a face a few inches from her own. It was a woman’s face, but it had been completely concealed by the fact that it looked exactly like the scenery behind it and only a hint of movement had given it away.
She felt Zal stiffen beside her as he saw the same thing. The imp shrieked and hopped.
The woman’s eyes flicked to him and back to Lila. She stepped sideways and a woman-shaped piece of the landscape moved, became three dimensional. Her skin looked as if it had been painted; it didn’t change now that she was in motion. “I am Gulfoyle,” she said, her black and brown eyes searching both of them with curiosity. “Who are you?”
“Zal Ahriman,” Zal said easily, though he was far from relaxed.
“An elf, but an odd one,” the woman said, apparently unaffected by the bitter damp though she was naked. She looked at Lila, with a sudden, birdlike movement. “And you?”
“Lila Black,” Lila said. She was suddenly aware of the bullets in her hand that she hadn’t cleaned yet. For some reason she started to move, to show them, then stopped. The faery’s eyes flickered and her mouth made a faint moue of annoyance.
“Then we all know each other and are strangers no more,” she said and laughed, because it was so obviously untrue. “Let us see if we cannot improve upon it. I am the forest but not of the forest and I come in winter yet it is not my season. I am the ox before the plough that pulls Jack’s Lost City into spring each time we turn away from the sun. I am harnessed though I would be free. That is why I am here. Why are you here?” She continued to examine them, walking around them gracefully, with the distinctive and hesitant movements of a wild deer. She seemed much taken with Lila’s worn, dark grey T-shirt and its aged, peeling slogan. “What does this mean—Do You Want Fries with That?”
“It’s a… joke…” Lila said, wishing she had picked up something else and not this thousand-year-old dreadful, never funny, and hence only worn in bed alone, piece of crap.
“Ah!” the faery smiled, very pleased. She prodded Lila’s bare arm. “You are strange.”
“I’m a cyborg,” Lila said.
Gulfoyle made a beckoning motion. “More more, I have told you my tale. I must hear yours now.”
“Madam, we are adventurers!” announced the imp grandly.
“A little demon,” Gulfoyle said, moving close on Thingamajig suddenly and poking him with a long finger. “It is ugly. Why do you have it?”
“In case of emergency,” Zal said, as though that explained everything. “We are of Demonia and Otopia and we are travelling through this place. We will not stay.”
“Will you not?” Gulfoyle moved back and tilted her head sideways thoughtfully, then held out one, long and elegant arm, which became the branch of a white ash tree. A grey bird of no particular kind came and lighted on it a moment. It was holding the tiny, struggling form of a grass doll. “I found this. It is here to tell you about a place. A b
labbing little thing it is. Nicely made,” she brought the doll close to her bosom and held it, as if it were hers and she a little girl. “Told me you are to meet someone here, in this valley’s end by the stones we pass every solstice, year on year. I would bet, adventurers, that you are good and lost, else you’d not tarry a second in Jack’s domain. And the dead jacks say so too. My jacks. Least, given to me to help make the way. And now I’ve none. So, what say you now?” Her eyes glittered as she stroked the doll, which twitched and stirred.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lila said, because it was easier, and the truth. “I did kill some faeries who attacked me. If they’re yours then too bad. And who is jack?”
“Say his name one more time and he’ll come hisself,” Gulfoyle said, with a hiss, closing the doll tight in her hand. “Then your case will be closed. So I’ve to think now. Think about who’s made you here and what for and why and if you’re better off dead or alive or with me or with Him As Is Lost. Ssss…” she turned away and shook her head—a collection of tiny sticks in which feathers and snowflakes were equally caught. From the back she appeared to be made of wicker, with plaster on the face side to create a solid front of the body. From the deep nest of her skull where the back of her head should have been tiny eyes looked back at Lila and whiskers twitched in the darkness there. She beckoned them both, “Keep walking. We mustn’t stop.”
Lila glanced at Zal and they stood their ground.
The fey turned. “Walk my dears, else he as you don’t want to catch you will catch you anyway. I am the head of the train. The engine that can!” She gave a whistle, exactly like a steam train whistle, that startled them both and made the birds rise up again and turn in the sky. She laughed. “Walk with me if you do not wish to be ground upon his rails.”
Going Under Page 21
