Prosper and the witchling froze as it finally came into view. Alastor wished again he had his own form, just so he could relish their expressions. Instead, he had to settle for sipping on the boy’s shock as it poured through him.
‘Those are …’ Prosper breathed out.
They are.
Two dragon skulls, both the size of buildings and painted silver, stared back at them from dark, eyeless sockets. Their mouths were open as if with their final death screeches, though, alas, their teeth had long ago been removed to spike the top of the Blood Gates. The skulls remained as entrances to the Market of Neverwoe, but a wise fiend knew that going through the jaws on the right, belonging to Scum, would result in getting a bucket of slime dumped on your head.
That is Squiggle and Scum. My great-grandsire’s pets and the last two of the great dragons. The brother and sister broke free from their pens and duelled for seven days and nights in the sky before finally killing one another and crashing back to the ground – carving out a slice of the mountain on impact, I might add. Their rotting corpses intertwined forevermore. Siblings: you cannot abide them in life, nor avoid them in death, it seems.
The boy tentatively poked the bone, retracting his hand as if scalded by it.
‘It looks like we came at the right time,’ Nell said, nodding to a sign resting between the two heads. ONE FINAL DAY OF MISCHIEF BEFORE THE CURTAIN FALLS AND THE MAGIC IS GONE! COME ONE, COME ALL, AND LEAVE YOUR WORRIES TO THE VOID . . . IF YOU DARE!
‘What are we looking for?’ Prosper asked.
A fiend called the Scholar. He keeps a booth toward the end of the market, buying and selling information.
‘We don’t have anything to pay for that information with,’ Prosper said, as if Alastor were not already perfectly aware of this.
Of course we do. The transactions are on information alone, a secret for a secret. One of his many spies will have told him where Pyra is holding your sister. And, Maggot?
‘Yeah?’
Don’t get distracted by the marvels inside. You will see many things that will stun and amaze you. Try not to embarrass yourself by losing all semblance of composure.
‘Okay,’ Prosper said, turning back toward Squiggle’s entrance. ‘Now you at least have me curious.’
They passed through the opening on the left. Walking down what had once been the throat of the dragon, they finally arrived at a shimmering curtain. Alastor relaxed as the sound of muffled music filled the boy’s ears, but he was surprised, very much so, when the boy’s mind lit up with recognition at the tune.
‘Do you hear that song … ?’ the witchling whispered, searching for the boy in the dark. ‘It sounds so much like—’
A long hand stretched out between the flaps of the curtain. Its skin was the colour of bruised apples, red and splotched with yellowing browns. All of its long nails had grown around themselves in spirals, hardened by the centuries into something that might rival stone.
Go on, Alastor urged the boy. Time is short, and we cannot delay. The market will not stay open for the eternity it’ll take for you to rediscover your nerve.
The palm was turned up, waiting. When Prosper did not approach quickly enough, it began to wave him forward, one finger curling at a time.
I hope you’re right about this, he thought at Alastor.
I am always right, Alastor said. There are only degrees of how correct I am.
Gingerly, as if afraid they might cut his pale skin like razors, the boy reached between the nails and placed the bottled magic inside. Closer now, Alastor could see that the fiend had painted its claws. Each one bore a different word, or a small cluster of stars. Beware, dreamers, lest you fall asleep.
The fiend yanked its closed fist back inside the darkness. The witch jumped as the curtain swung shut again.
The boy opened his mouth, most likely to say something foolish. Before he could, the same fiend reached back out through the tent, pushing the fabric aside.
Satisfied with the offering, he crooked a finger and bade them to enter.
The Market of Neverwoe
The fabric swept back into place behind them, bathing them in the chamber’s shadows.
The witchling looked for the fiend who had let them inside. The simple fact was that mortals, whether mere humans or witches, were not used to parsing the darkness, looking for the shadows that lurked inside of shadows.
‘What now?’ Prosper asked.
A metal box suddenly appeared before them, floating on an iridescent cloud of magic. Its heavy lid creaked open, revealing two silver bracelets inside.
The boy’s heart leaped painfully as a bodiless voice said, ‘Put one on. These are your tickets to enter.’
Both humans did as asked; only the witch actually bothered to investigate hers before obediently sliding it on. Prosper gasped as the metal shrank around his wrist, glowing. Nell sniffed at hers.
‘It’s enchanted,’ she confirmed.
Prosper held up his arm. ‘You think?’
It wasn’t until the witch reluctantly put her bracelet on that the same voice warned, ‘You have paid for an hour’s time in Neverwoe. Stay longer, and the bracelet will tighten … and tighten … until you leave with one less body part than you arrived with.’ The voice sped up as it added, ‘Standard terms and operating procedures apply. You will be charged for any cleaning that must be done, including mopping of blood, sweeping of feathers and the tracking down of stray fingers. Please give verbal confirmation that you understand these terms.’
‘I do,’ the boy said.
‘I do,’ the witch said, eyeing the bracelet with deep suspicion.
‘Marvellous! Then relax, shed your worries and woes, and prepare for the adventure of an eternal lifetime!’
All at once new, unfamiliar strains of music spun up from nowhere and everywhere, the haunting voices of shades rising from the darkness, along with the rather bored-looking shades themselves.
‘It’s a realm of slaughter,
A realm of fears.
It’s a realm of terror
And a realm of jeers.
Come, leave your cares,
But humans beware!
It’s a fiend’s realm after all!
It’s a fiend’s realm after all!’
‘Wait,’ Prosper began. ‘They totally ripped off —’
‘Where did they even hear this song?’ Nell pressed. ‘And how?’
You know this song? Alastor asked. It was a new addition to Neverwoe, surely, but he found it highly unlikely that the two mortals had encountered such an original, creative tune.
The changes, however, did not end there.
Lights flashed on around them, momentarily blinding the boy with their spiralling prism. The curtain on the other side of the chamber fell, revealing a tunnel of more spinning lights. The walls themselves curved and turned over the platform, which, as the human stepped on to it, began to move forward on its own.
Alastor supposed that in the three-hundred-odd years that he’d been away, the Masters had made some improvements to the market, but this seemed a bit … much?
He, through the boy’s eyes, watched as the silhouetted images of snakes, scorpions and wraiths spilled over the top of the tunnel. They were so distracted that no one, not even the witch, noticed when a Master stepped out of a shadow pocket and entered the tunnel alongside them.
‘Welcome, boos and ghouls!’ he crowed.
The witch jumped again, reaching for the pack hidden beneath her cloak. The boy let out a small shout of surprise, and though he would deny it to his own future grave, Alastor did as well.
What – who is that? the boy asked.
A Master, Alastor answered, feeling generous now that they were back in a place he loved so well. A cheerful race of tricksters. They usually remain invisible, save when needed.
Are they going to try to eat me if they find out I’m human?
As if eating was the worst of what they might do to him. Of course not. They are busin
essfiends. They would harvest your organs and bones first to be sold here.
The Masters seemed to have simply appeared one day;they were nearly human in form, but the quality of their skin, shrunken tight against their muscles and bones, was like worn lizard leather. Big eyes stared out from their signature wild bushes of white hair. The clouds of it wrapped around from the top of their heads down over the entire lower half of their faces.
‘Um, hi?’ the boy whispered.
The Master floated beside them, his legs tucked up beneath him and his back hunched. He held out a hand with claws so long, they curled into themselves.
‘You are on a journey of ghastly wonder, to a place of no troubles, no worries, and yes, no woe!’ the Master rasped. ‘Your every wish shall be brought to life for one day more! Come, lose yourself in the depths of delight before our magic is taken by the queen. There are no limits to your fun, only a few simple rules we ask you to abide by—’
Another Master opened a shadow pocket and stuck his head out to say, ‘Mind the rules, mind your manners.’
‘No pushing,’ said another Master, this one female.
‘And absolutely no fighting,’ added a third, sticking only a wagging finger out of his pocket.
‘They’re playing with interdimensional travel,’ Nell whispered to the boy, sounding awed. ‘They’re slicing open and mending the fabric of time and space to move around quickly.’
‘Wares will be paid for in blood, trade, magic or coin,’ said the first. ‘And at time of purchase.’
‘And, our fine fiends, if you’ve got the notion to thieve … lose it now, or feel the deadly sting of the magic we have put in place to protect the merchandise,’ said another, keeping half of her form in and half of her form out of the pocket.
‘All sales are as final as the grave, and there are no refunds for fangs, limbs or lunches lost on the rides,’ said the first Master sweetly, reopening a shadow pocket. Thanks to the witch’s comment, Alastor wondered, for the first time, how it was that the Masters could play with opening and closing pockets the way a witch might banish something to the Inbetween.
Curious, that.
‘Keep all paws, claws, and limbs inside the rides at all times,’ the female said, slipping back inside her own pocket. ‘Ignore these instructions and you will find yourself in dire peril.’
Prosper’s bracelet heated, activating as their bodiless voices declared, ‘Your hour begins … now.’
At least one part of the entrance to Neverwoe was the same: the ground suddenly dropped out from beneath them. The boy hit the bone slide with a hard ‘Oopf!’ and was unable to catch his breath as it spun him around and around and around, the witch following close behind with a loud shriek.
When the bodies of the dragons had crash-landed on to the mountain, they’d destroyed a whole section of the second step, creating a sort of half street between the Flats and the Boneyard.
The boy soared off the end of the slide, landing on a strategically placed cushion. Three Masters appeared out of the air, two to lift him on to his feet, one to brush the dust off his cloak. The boy gripped his hood, struggling to keep it up, even as a Master tried to peer under it.
‘Don’t be shy,’ the Master said. ‘We are all fiends here!’
The boy’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Alastor could feel some realization dawning in the boy’s mind as he studied the Master, and neither he, nor, apparently, the Master liked it. The fiend released him and spun away dramatically, diving into a shadow pocket.
The witchling managed to land with far more grace, batting away the hands that tried to help her.
‘Are you okay?’ Prosper whispered, steadying her as she found her footing.
The witchling nodded. ‘Can we just get this over with? This looks like a fiend’s dream, which means it’s a nightmare to us.’
From where they stood at the entrance, it was already apparent that this was no longer the market to which Alastor had once lost thousands of hours exploring. It had expanded, like a pup to a full-grown wolf, acquiring new teeth and a higher-quality coat. The explosion of trilling, tinkling sounds and colours around them was an assault on the senses and made those simple stalls of curiosities and fun Alastor remembered feel almost quaint in comparison.
The Masters had more visitors, which meant, of course, more magic, which meant, again of course, that they could simply do more. They could push the limits of imagination and find distractions to hook fiends again and again until they were addicted to the sensations. That was the point of Neverwoe – to find ceaseless wonders and amusements until, finally, your paid time ran out.
The changes to the market made him feel somewhat uneasy, but Alastor was pleased to see that there were several hundred fiends dashing around, and more were entering behind them. At least some fiends were eager to leave behind the problems of Pyra’s rule and whatever this Void was. That was how fiends were meant to act. Not acceptance, but avoidance, until whatever problem they faced sorted itself out.
This is … quite different than I recall, Alastor admitted. It was so very … bright. Loud. A pack of lycans stood on a platform hanging from the ridge of Scum’s spine, howling out a tune, plucking at a battered violin made of troll intestines and playing a wheezing accordion crafted from the lungs of infant war boars. The fiends milling around them cheered as another song started up.
One of the Masters appeared at the top of an enormous vat of whirling, sparkling magic nearby. She took the visitors’ bottle and poured in their admission fee. Just that bit was enough to make the strands of magic-powered lights twinkle and for the vat to spit out iridescent bubbles. They drifted toward the two separate corridors, two different avenues of entertainment.
Venturing into what had once been Squiggle’s belly, now draped with odd emerald-and-black-striped silk, would lead a fiend into an array of diverting amusements. Attractions that allowed you to magically shape your enemy out of wax and rearrange their parts, fairy-slingshot competitions with an array of prizes to be had, stone-lizard races, ooze pits and slides, dunking for heart fruit in giggle juice – that one was rather tricky business, as you had to snatch a pulpy fruit between your teeth before dissolving into unrelenting fits of cackles thanks to the liquid.
There were signs for new attractions as well. The boy leaned toward that corridor, eyes widening again as he and Alastor both glimpsed what was inside. There was an enormous bone loop, on which baskets full of fiends were rising and circling around and around at a quick clip. Another contraption allowed fiends to be strapped into fake iron wings and flung around on chains, as if they were flying. They soared above Neverwoe, shrieking, bobbing, diving. Another sign promised a booth in which you could walk inside of your own dreams or visit with a long-dead ancestor.
The bright new paint, the striped tents, the strings upon strings of magic lights where there once had been fairies stuck inside glass orbs – it was quite a bit more flash than Alastor recalled. In fact, the old sign reading THE MARKET OF NEVERWOE had been changed to read THE NEVERWOE KUNEVIL!
‘Kunevil,’ the boy read. ‘Like carnival?’
The sign clearly reads ‘kunevil’, Maggot. I realize some things are beyond mortal comprehension, but do try to keep up. Don’t scorn the Masters for their genius.
‘This is all very familiar,’ the witchling said, glancing toward Prosper. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘That’s one word for it,’ he said. ‘Rip-off is another.’
Rip-off is two words, you abominable, crusty thumb. Will you please just take the path to the right? That’s where most of the market stalls were, and where we will find the Scholar if he is still here.
Before the boy could take another step, a roar of vapour-tinged air and sound whipped over their heads. Small metal wagons raced along a track of bone Alastor hadn’t noticed before, picking up speed as their pathway dipped. The fiends riding it screeched in delight as they passed by.
Hey, Al, the boy began. What did you say happened to t
hose humans who accidentally found themselves Downstairs?
Don’t bore me with irrelevant questions. One was eaten—
Not that one. The other ones.
They were … Alastor reached back through his long memory, trying to locate the humans in question. When nothing came up, he fumbled for a reasonable reply. They were lost to the darkness of Downstairs.
‘Uh-huh,’ the boy said. ‘Never to be seen or heard from again?’
What is it that you’re implying? On second thought, I do not wish to know. Just continue forward along the right path before you squander our hour, will you?
The boy, mercifully, complied.
‘Hang on,’ Nell said, grabbing Prosper’s arm when he took a step toward the corridor’s opening. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a small vial of silver powder and clenched it in her fist.
‘What is this stuff?’ Prosper asked, holding it up. The witch caught his hand before he could give the glass a shake.
‘This is an emergency exit,’ she said quietly. ‘If we need it. I have one, too. Just hang on to it, okay?’
The market rolled out before them like a serpent’s black tongue. This, at least, mostly aligned with Alastor’s memory. Rather than chiselled stone or shaped metal, the shop signs pulsed with the ribbons of magic that flowed through them, illuminating the tables of wares for sale as the green essence travelled along the edges of the booths. Fist-sized fairies sucked at the power on those glowing lines, oblivious to the fiends milling around with wire baskets, frantically buying up the last of each vendor’s items.
As expected, the first few vendor stalls were stocked only with food and drink – something Alastor recognized from his time in Salem as being corn kernels that had popped, only this was drizzled with the syrupy blood of bane beetles. Nearby, bats roasted on pikes, waiting to be peppered and then devoured by the lycans hovering nearby, growling with impatience.
A Master stepped out of a pocket directly in their path. He clutched a tray in his hands, one overflowing with glass goblets of iridescent green drink.
Prosper Redding: The Last Life of Prince Alastor Page 7
