“Jack wishes to meet you in person,” was the reply, given on a plume of hot breath.
“We heard him say so,” Zal agreed. “But that doesn’t mean we want to meet him. We have business elsewhere. You are delaying us. Time is short.”
“He’ll return you to your moment,” Moguskul said into the air in front of him. He was relaxed and unmoving, except for his speaking. Around them the still town sparkled with reflected light.
“Just moving on will be enough,” Zal said in an almost amiable tone that suggested all unpleasantness could be put aside, even laughed off. He was giving a chance but from the sharp spike in his energy level that made him seem suddenly almost electric with potential, Lila knew he was expecting a violent refusal.
“Don’t force me to fight you,” the hunting faery said. His shoulders were low. He looked like a whipped dog.
“Your choice,” Zal said lightly.
“Yours,” the fey replied, quiet now, the word almost silent, it was so dampened by the surroundings.
Nothing moved. Lila felt dizzy, longing for anything to undo the moment that hung over them all and make it fall one way or another. There was almost a sense of presence in the silence, as if every mote of snow and fragment of building were listening and holding them fast, enjoying their indecision and the suspension of all their intent.
This is Jack, she thought. All of this, and the freezing, and the stasis, it’s all him.
She looked at Zal. “We’re inside him,” she said.
“That don’t mean shit to me,” Zal said, his voice melodic with demon tones. He was almost completely transparent, a dark kind of ghost against the brilliance of the frost, his face stretched into the longer and more alien lines of the true Shadowkin, eyes black pits. Compared to the others he made almost no breath at all. “He already met us, he just doesn’t want to show himself so we have to walk his way. I don’t care how big he is or what he wants. I’m not going any further under his command. This is good enough.”
“To meet in a place of warmth and safety is what he ordered,” Moguskul said, struggling with the words as it clearly pained him to maintain diplomacy when his hands were twitchy with anger.
“I am warm enough and I was safe before he overtook me,” Zal said. “This’ll do.”
Lila’s T-shirt crackled as she moved, melting where it touched her, freezing as soon as it moved away from her. She felt obliquely angry herself, that Zal hadn’t asked her before taking his hard line—she’d imagined a trip more akin to an international meeting, with civilised question and answers, nobody wanting to move for a struggle—but now that he’d committed to the first move she could only follow through. “Let Jack speak for himself,” she said to Moguskul, standing her ground in the snow.
A light patter of tiny snowflakes began to fall, silently. She inspected them on high resolution and saw the images trapped there. She got the impression that they were old, somehow, of the past; the colours in them were faded as if they’d been in the sun too long.
“You don’t understand,” growled Moguskul, his hand on the haft of the axe at his belt. “Within the palace is the only place you will see Jack.”
“He spoke to us in the city,” Zal said.
“That was only his voice.”
“Can you give us a minute?” Lila broke in, feeling the weight of the exchange growing more deadly by the second.
Seeing it as his only likely chance to persevere, Moguskul nodded and stomped off a few metres further on out of earshot, probably.
Lila moved in close to Zal and whispered, “What are you doing?”
“I’m keeping us out of his place of power,” Zal said. “I’ve never seen for myself but I’ve heard of faeries like this. Gulfoyle and Jack are both ancient great ones. They’re not just people, sometimes they’re not even people, they’re the land and the sky and a place, a time. Further in the deep past they don’t even have selves or voices… they’re akin to primal forces, with only the beginnings of awareness. I’ve heard of Jack too. Gulfoyle called him Giantkiller. He’s the Green King, the Winter Death, you know,” he lowered his voice even further and touched her ear with his andalune body so that he barely had to speak. “The Fisher King, whose impotence lays waste to all it contacts. At midwinter some quester, the grail quester, comes to ask him a question. If it is the right question rightly said, then either Jack is healed or else he will die and another comes to take his place in a new land. Quick, quick, look it all up, I haven’t time to tell you but the human stories about him will do.”
Lila accessed her AI data sets but Zal was faster. He scowled as he said, “Clearly we are in the position of the grail quest knights. I don’t like the sound of that. Especially since he’s been stuck here for tens of thousands of years…”
“Yes, shade,” said Jack’s voice suddenly, loudly, impressively, from the snow. “That I have. You are right to be wary of entering my shrines and holy places with your ignorance intact. However, unlike the pretty tales for children at the fire, it is not my usual practice to simply vanish when the knights do not ask the right question. No knight has asked aright. I scatter them to the wind. And no knight has come here in all the human ages. No human knight at all, nor any other, for all who tried had fallen before the first of you was born. What say you to that, armoured woman? Do you not come here to this land with a quest?”
“I… I’ve nothing to do with some old myth,” Lila said. She thought of Malachi, wished he were there. “I never even heard of you until just now. I came here to find someone who can hunt down the Mothkin and take them back from my world. They are a plague.”
A sudden gust of wind, so cold it felt like it cut her flesh, zipped past them, hurling and scattering ice so hard that where it touched her hands and face she started to bleed. She heard Moguskul jog up from his sentry position and when she looked she saw a cut across his cheek the size of one of her fingers. It bled only a little, among many other scars. He simply scowled at her, as if it were her fault.
“Then you have come in vain,” Jack said from the wind this time. “For nobody who comes here has left again, nor can leave. This is the nature of our situation. Were it other I would say easily that Moguskul is your man. There is no beast or beastkin alive in any realm that he cannot hunt and master. I would lend him to you for some comely price. We would barter and celebrate and enjoy the good life of freedom, no? But that will not be.” There was more than a hint of selfpity in the tones, but Lila couldn’t really blame him. She didn’t much like the sound of it, looked at Zal, saw him frowning and set with anger and resistance.
When they didn’t answer immediately Jack laughed—another gust that blew snow all around them—and said, “Even so, unlucky as you are, you should have your chance to make the turn that will sunder our loneliness. I say it is your only chance. Come now, to the palace, but take your time. There is a day to go. If you will tarry to think upon what question you might ask, perhaps it will go better. Maybe you, of all the knights in ever, will free us from this lock.” He was laughing by the end of this speech, as if there couldn’t be anything funnier. He had to stop talking. The snow billowed around them and the ground thrummed.
“While there’s some time there’s some hope,” Thingamajig said from Lila’s ear.
“There’s never any hope, you misleading and lying little shite,” Zal growled at him, narrow eyed, as frightening as any spectre. “There’s only what is. And what is, is a great big fuckup.” He said to Jack, “We’ll take your day. Give us your hospitality.”
As he finished speaking there was a cold, clear instant, as if a bell had rung loudly and they were in the vibration of it though the sound had stopped.
“But in abundance! Moguskul, give them a house and all the feasting a shade and a Hoodoo minx can eat! Drink, company, whatever they will! Until sunset tomorrow, I bid you a very, very good night.” Everything became slightly less than what it had been. Jack had passed.
Lila turned and saw Moguskul setting
his mouth in a long, grim line, wincing as this moved his cut in the icy air. “Come along,” he said and opened the door that was right next to him into one of the little faery houses. As she stepped past him to go inside he whispered to her, so quietly that only she could have figured out what he said, by reprocessing the tiny sounds over and over again. He said, “Jack doesn’t remember his past. He doesn’t know what the question is himself. You must trick him. It’s the only way.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Malachi stumped along in Madrigal’s footsteps through the icy grass. He hadn’t started out stumping, but he’d ended up doing it. As he watched her broad, capable back, crossed with rifle and sword, he tried to watch her bottom but was thwarted by her seriously heavy furs and could only imagine its perfect peach curves swaying with every step. So his temper had slowly eroded. The walk was long, he wasn’t keen on examining his feelings at having turned into an older form of himself that seemed to be more salivating brute than witty dandy, and here he was walking to a likely doom in the footsteps of unrequited love which had been enduring and hopeless. Unrequited wasn’t quite right. Madrigal did have tender feelings for him, but he was reasonably sure they’d never amount to adulterous. He’d yet to find a time or place where some other male fey hadn’t captured her heart, but he lived in hope and that made him miserable. It was the reason he didn’t like to spend a lot of time in Faery. Cats and fertility figures—as if they went together anyway, it didn’t even make magical sense. And now he was so close to her, but as far as ever. He felt filthy in every possible way.
Behind him Nixas was humming a little song to herself. It wasn’t really clear to him how she’d changed. She was taller, a bit stronger, more earthy, less nighty… no significant alterations. Which meant she was one of those seriously old types, he guessed, or else that she had less place in a modern world than he did. Her gender flickered more often here and the differences between her two forms were minimal. When he caught sight of her from the corner of his eye he saw a shimmer around her, her wings vast across the landscape, the size and surface of a lake ruffled by the wind.
At the rear of their small group Teazle ambled, his eyes glowing, the blinks like lanterns signalling secret codes across the night. Malachi could tell a great deal about those in his darkness because of the coal dust he’d used to cover them. The weight of lost forests lay over them and brought their scents to him as if through living trees: Nix was feeling dread in spite of her careless exterior. She knew about this place because she felt it in the land; Jack’s death coming over everything. Her song protected her from its dark energy. And Teazle was dreaming of death too, but in a loving way. To him this episode in his life was only one more step and turn in his tango with the inevitable. He held it as close as a lover and there was fresh wildness in his heart because he had recently overcome some significant obstacle and felt himself powerful, almost inviolable. Malachi wondered what that was, but was rather glad he didn’t know. He wasn’t sure if he should fear for Lila, being connected to that one, even if Teazle seemed to be protective and kind towards her. Those just weren’t quite demon traits and he suspected Teazle had other motives.
Madrigal, on the other hand, was businesslike. She led them through low hills towards a flat plain dotted with lights, which Malachi assumed resentfully was Jack’s palace. Somewhere around them in the dark he smelled dog—the giant wolf keeping pace.
And a way behind them, surprisingly quiet, but filled with anxiety and a desperate need not to be left out, crept Viridia and Poppy in their most natural form: two black horses, thick furred for winter, mouths full, the tongues and teeth of piranha. They were hungry and their spirits were restless. Periodically they snuffed the air for any signs of prey, caught traces of those ahead and pricked their ears, then remembered and shook themselves off with resignation. Of the giddy, silly party girls who sang in Zal’s band there was only the merest trace, like a hint of perfume on the wind. They smelled of horse and lakebeds and cold, slimy things.
Madrigal called a halt at a half mile distance from the city lights and hunkered down on her heels in the lee of a large rock. They joined her and she said, “My sprite hasn’t come back. I need to make another, see what’s going on.”
She brought out dried fruit from a pouch inside her wraps and some dried grass like the stuff Malachi used and began to fashion a small doll, its fat belly full of raisins and plums. With a final clever twist she was done and then looked up into Malachi’s eyes, her golden warm gaze amused and friendly. “You were always the best maker,” she said. “Almost as good as the Little Master. Would you?” She held the doll out to him.
“Of course,” he said, barely able to get the words past his tight throat. He reached forwards, watching his own hand nearing hers, his fingers too thick and too heavy as they stretched out of the cat’s paw. He touched the doll on its head and felt his intent pass into it—too much intent as it happened, but the deed was done. The doll jumped up and ran along Madrigal’s arm to her shoulder where it tossed a hank of her hair aside and kissed her on the cheek, with a head slam of grass.
“Lovely Mistress of the Harvest, what is your will?” the doll said adoringly. “Delicious grapes and juicy plums make us sweet as sweet can be, we’d like them in our mouths all day long. Is these our pay?”
“A dinner is as welcome as cold cash to a hungry belly,” Madrigal blushed faintly, colour rising in her cheeks like a pink dawn as she finalised the Hoodoo. “Oh Cat,” she said, her face full of pleasure and a little concern.
“Sorry,” he said, sitting back. He wished he’d made his love for her less plain and hoped the others hadn’t picked up on it.
To the doll she said, “Go find Cat’s human friend and when you have, then come back and tell us all.”
“I will Mistress,” the doll piped. “I run, I run! Yum yum!” It jumped down from her shoulder and hopped off over the snow in a series of wildly springing bounds, like a flea. In a moment or two it vanished from sight.
Teazle watched and said languidly, “You can make little servants who work for treats?”
Madrigal broke gaze with Cat, rather grateful for the interruption, he thought, and said, “The Hoodoo is the oldest magic we have. Actually, not so much a magic as… someone. But as long as the deals are fair, then we deal.” She hesitated. Malachi finished for her, “But the more you use the Hoodoo, the more it uses you,” he said. “That’s part of its price. Why we don’t use it unless we have no other way.”
“Can you teach me?” the demon asked.
“Not now,” Malachi said. “Maybe later, if we survive.” He felt foolish. He had given the Hoodoo more than he ought to have, carelessly. One should always be scrupulous with it and he hadn’t been. Like Zal, he thought. An even more deep foreboding came over him. He looked after the line the little doll had taken and licked his whiskers for comfort.
“Everything comes back,” Madrigal said and stroked his head with her strong, weatherbitten hand. He leaned his cheek into her caress and closed his eyes.
“One unlooked-for kindness mends more souls than a world of righteous care,” he murmured, returning one old fairy saying with another and felt a moment of stolen happiness, warm and rich and sweet.
“Will we stay here the night?” Naxis asked, wrapped up in his wings so much that he looked like just a head on top of a column of water.
“We may have to,” Madrigal said. “Cat, you’re the fastest tracker. Go steal us some kindling and wood and we’ll make fire.”
“No need,” the demon interrupted her as she was finishing. He took out one of his swords from its scabbard on his back, its blade glowing with the flat light of a low-energy lightbulb, and plunged it into the ground between them. He said a word in demonic and the thing burst into flames, white and blue and so very hot that they all leaned backwards before they were burned. “See,” he said. “I have my uses.”
“Your fire is deadly indeed,” Madrigal said, after her surprise was gone. “It tast
es of consumption and disease… but it warms and we are grateful.”
“Its name means Corruptor,” Teazle said. “But the flames, like its bite, are purifying. You taste its power burning, that’s all. The heat is plain good heat, nothing more.”
Madrigal smiled but Nixas edged away from the sword a little more, her eyes narrow with caution. “Such swords…” she said “… breathe.”
… it is of the legendary hoard of Ahramazda,” Teazle told her with a fierce grin. “But as to how I came to have it… that I don’t recall. This is very strange, this living in the past! In the future world I have no idea that I ever lived before in any way. And now I know things I never knew, nor will know again…” he stopped, blinking, mystified.
“You will remember it now, for a time at least,” Malachi said. “Forgetting comes over a long time. If you return here, then you remember again. Some things like yesterday that are ages old.”
All the fey shared looks of misgiving and disquiet but Teazle kept on grinning happily, and periodically recounting new things that he had just remembered about himself so that the time passed quite quickly, if not comfortably, until the doll came leaping back again, draggled and thin, but whole.
“Mistress of the Tasty Fruit,” it huffed. “Your human is inside Jack’s Homely House. We overhead it talking with the Ruined elf. They have agreed to the quest already.”
Madrigal made a face of agonised disappointment. “Did the woman have a silver charm about her?”
“I didn’t see one.”
“And did they seem well?”
“As well as you can be when you’ve no idea what’s going on,” the doll nodded. “Which is very well indeed. Want me to take another look? I think I’ll make it with some extra stuffing. I like rosehips. And cranberries.” There was a pause in which Teazle shook his head and all of them felt a dizziness that wasn’t quite inside or outside them.
“No,” Madrigal said. “That’s all.”
“Awww….” the doll began to whine but she picked it up and tossed it into the sword-fire where it was instantly crisped to black ashes. A tension that had been drawing across them all like a fine wire eased suddenly and everyone let out their breath.
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