Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (36 page)

Hogg took the sword from him carefully. It burned against his skin for a moment, then cooled to the temperature of his hand. He studied along its length; it seemed almost made for him. “Come,” he said to George and Anthony, and then, without waiting to see if they would follow, he moved into the thick of the fighting.

Someone bellowed in his ear; someone nearly knocked him down with the hilt of a sword. A horse neighed close by. It was far more chaotic than he had expected. He thrust his way through the fighting toward Arthur.

Arthur shone like the sun on water. The light nearly blinded Hogg. One of the horned men stepped out of a knot of soldiers, his sword drawn, and Hogg raised his own weapon to counter him.

It was not like any sword-work Hogg had ever known. Men on both sides jostled them as they fought, and it was hard work to keep his footing in the shifting tide of battle. He moved in to attack but his opponent seemed to be waiting for him; he backed away but the man came after him. Then someone stumbled against the horned man and he went down, knocked off balance. Hogg bent over him and thrust his sword to the man's heart.

He turned and looked for Arthur. As he straightened he felt a sharp pain in his side, fierce as loss. He closed his eyes, overcome with the pain, and when he opened them again he found himself on the ground. Two pairs of boots scuffled near his head.

What had happened? He raised his head with difficulty and saw that he had been wounded. Blood seeped over his doublet.

He tried to see Arthur, but the boy was still hidden by the press of fighting. He closed his eyes again, felt the last of his strength ebb away. The noises around him stilled.

The red king looked out at the battle. He had not moved or changed his expression, but Alice thought that something had happened to displease him. He raised his arm and a giant shape came into the yard, something so huge it battered the gate's lintel to the ground. It was the size of a tree, and it carried a chain in one hand and a club in the other. It headed purposefully toward Arthur, moving quickly, and the red king's soldiers parted to make way for it.

Arthur's mount shied as it caught sight of the thing. In two steps the giant was upon him, the length of chain swinging from its hand. Arthur brought his sword up to meet it. He looked very young. With one thrust of its club the creature knocked the sword from Arthur's hand. Another thrust, and Arthur fell from his mount. He moaned and clutched his side. The giant stood over him, its club upraised.

Without even thinking about what she was doing Alice darted out into the fighting. She snatched Tom's dagger from his hand, and before he had time to react she came up behind the giant and plunged the dagger deep into the sinews of its knee.

It roared and turned to face her. She ran as its club struck downward. It raised the length of chain. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Arthur stand and retrieve his sword, and as the giant bore down upon her Arthur struck. It turned again, and Arthur stabbed it in the stomach.

The giant staggered back. Alice felt the ground shake as it fell. Two of the horned men hurried up to it, their swords lifted. She moved as quickly as she could toward the pillars of the cathedral, not waiting to see what they did with it.

Tom looked around him slowly. The noises of battle were fading, and it seemed as if the sun rose, though surely they had been fighting all day. He picked up the dagger Alice had dropped and noticed that it was covered not with blood but with a sort of pale watery fluid. The sight appalled him.

So did the memory of the exultant mood that had come over him in battle. He had never killed before. Had the brown woman truly bewitched him? Or did he only feel what all soldiers felt in the heat of war? He backed away. Fighting was not for him. Yet was this so very different from the paper battles he fought with Gabriel Harvey?

He stumbled toward one of the side doors of the church. The brown woman stepped out from the shelter of the doorway and came toward him. She put her arms around him and kissed him, her mouth tasting smooth as clear water.

The silver dragon screamed. The red dragon backed away and then, to the horror of the stationers who had stayed to watch, it plunged down and came in toward the churchyard, near the gate. A few stalls toppled as it landed, and the swing of its tail burst one of the stained glass windows.

Seeing it in the sky had not prepared Alice for the size of the thing. It stretched nearly half the length of Paul's, and its scales were as big as dinner plates. The scales reared up into two ridges, almost horns, over its eyes. The eyes were slitted, like a cat's, and a plume of smoke came from its nostrils.

The dragon lowered its snout to the ground as if questing for something. It took the red king in its mouth, carrying him almost gently, and turned and set him on its back. Then it lifted its wings and flew away. The wind of its passage raised the dirt in the yard, blew clothing backward and knocked the stationers' books to the ground.

The silver dragon dove for it as it gained the air. The red dragon feinted to the left and then swooped back over the tower, but the other was too quick for it. The silver dragon flew in close and gripped the red dragon hard with its talons.

The red dragon struggled to get free, its tail lashing back and forth like a whip. Something the size of a child's toy dropped from its back and plummeted to the earth. The stationers watched in horror as the red king fell to the churchyard. No one moved for a long moment. Then, as if he were licked from inside by flame, the king caught fire and burned to ash. The red dragon keened, a sound of such grief it seemed to rend the air in two, and flew off toward the river. The other followed, crying out in triumph.

With the red king dead his soldiers seemed to lose heart. All around the churchyard his creatures dropped their weapons and ran for the gate, those that were not caught and killed by the queen's folk. A few people cheered. Even some of the booksellers cheered, though there was not one of them who had not suffered some loss in the destruction of the yard.

Suddenly Alice noticed that a knot of stationers had gathered around George's stall. Curious, she made her way toward it. As she came closer she heard some of the men murmur in alarm, and one or two of them crossed themselves. A few of the men moved aside for her, as if to acknowledge that she of all people had a right to be present, and finally she stood at the front of the crowd. What she saw there made her gasp aloud.

All the books on George's stall had turned to coal.

21

Anthony Drury pushed George toward the churchyard gate. “Wait—” George said. “What are you—”

“He's dead,” Anthony said harshly. “He won't be able to protect us anymore.”

Did Anthony mean Hogg or the red king? It didn't seem to matter. George glanced back once at his stall and saw that a crowd of people surrounded it. He thought he could guess what had happened.

“Where are we going?” he asked, hurrying after Anthony.

“I have a friend, a man who worked for the red king. He'll help us.”

They left the churchyard, moving quickly. Why did Anthony need help? If all George's books had turned to coal the stationers would very likely hunt him down for a witch, but what had Anthony done?

“Hurry!” Anthony said. “Do you know what happens to counterfeiters?”

George could barely summon the breath to speak, let alone to answer Anthony's question. “They'll cut my ears off,” Anthony said. “If I'm lucky. They could kill me if they were angry enough.”

Dusk had fallen; that and the strange events of the day kept folks from venturing out-of-doors. Anthony and George ran through the empty streets, blown like embers from a long-dead fire.

“Pray that he's home,” Anthony said, slowing to study the houses as they passed. “He does a great deal of business overseas.”

Finally he stopped and knocked on a door. Every window in the house was lit; someone, George thought, had stayed up for something. For them? A man carrying a lantern came to the door. In the dim light his pale blue eyes shone like wet stones.

“The red king?” the man asked.

“Dead,” Anthony said, pushing his way past him into the house. “It went badly for us, Master Poley. The red king fell, and Hogg is dead as well.”

George sat shakily on a stool near the hearth, suddenly overcome with weariness. “Dead,” Poley said, pacing back and forth in front of the fire. “Well. Worse than I'd expected, far worse.” He seemed to be talking to himself, to have forgotten the presence of the other men.

“They're after George,” Anthony said. “They'll be after me soon enough—the magic that protected me is gone, and they'll see how I debased the coins. We have to get away, go—go somewhere—”

“Of course,” Poley said. He seemed to rouse himself. “I can arrange that. I'll send you to the Low Countries, there or to France. You'll be caught in the middle of war either way, but it can't be helped.”

George raised his head. Did Poley mean exile? He had never bargained for this when he had listened so heedlessly to Anthony, that day in the churchyard. He began to shiver, though the fire at his back was warm. “I don't—I don't want to—”

“Quiet, George,” Anthony said. “You have no choice in the matter. Either come with me or be tried as a witch.”

George fell back, feeling miserable. “You'll have to stay here for the night,” Poley said. Even through his unhappiness George understood that nothing would happen to Poley; he was the sort of man who would be able to start over whatever happened, who could always find a port no matter what the weather. “We'll leave in the morning.”

Alice looked around for George, could not find him anywhere. “Imagine,” one of the men said to her, “him calling you a witch when he was the witch all along.”

She felt too shaky to answer. The light began to fade from the churchyard. She looked around her in alarm, saw that only a handful of Oriana's folk were left. Brownie—Where was Brownie? And where was her son?

“What a sight,” one of the stationers said to her, and all the men in the little group turned to hear her reply. She understood that they wanted to talk to her, wanted to make amends for the shabby way they had treated her. But she noticed that none of them attempted an apology.

She pushed her way through the crowd, feeling impatient and angry. She had no time to waste on these people, who, after all, had left her to herself for three long years. Art was still missing, and she needed to find Brownie.

“Alice!” someone called to her from across the churchyard. “Hurry!”

It was Brownie. She ran toward him with relief. As she left the circle of stationers she saw Walter, standing at the edge of the crowd and watching her with an expression she could not make out.

“We must hurry,” Brownie said. “They're starting to leave us.”

“Who?”

“Queen Oriana and her people. They've had terrible losses here today. I doubt you'll see the Fair Folk ever again.”

“Why? Where are they going?”

“I don't know. They're moving away from mortals, away from this world. All the passages are growing dim and hard to find. We must find your son soon, or he will be lost to you.”

“But you—you were the one to hide him.”

“Aye. But they've cast a glamour over the roads. Soon their lives and yours will be sundered forever.”

“I don't understand. How will we find him?”

“Come,” Brownie said. “Take my hand.”

She reached out hesitantly. His hand felt warm and dry, with only the soft fur on the back to remind her of who he was.

They began to walk. The sun had set, or the Fair Folk had taken their light with them. She could barely see Brownie at her side. After a moment she realized that they had somehow left Paul's, that they should have reached the gate or the walls by now. The air had grown cold. “Where are we?” she said, whispering.

“Hush.”

She looked at Brownie and saw that the lines on his face were creased with concentration. Then a glow came up around them, at first so faint she thought she might have imagined it. The light grew stronger. “Did you do that?” she asked, but he did not answer.

Now she could see that they walked through a dense forest, a place of thick leaves and overgrown paths. She had not seen such large trees since she left her village; certainly there was nothing like them near London. Almost immediately they came to a fork in the road, a junction where three paths met. Brownie stopped. He looked from one road to another, and Alice felt afraid to see the puzzled look that appeared on his broad seamed face.

He chose the left-hand path and they continued onward. A screech owl called, and another answered. Something scurried beside them through the drift of leaves. Frogs croaked in the distance.

A long howl came to them from far off and she cried out. Brownie urged her forward. But soon he stopped at another fork in the road, four paths radiating outward, and this time he took even longer to decide what to do. At last he chose one of the middle paths and they went on.

She thought they might have spent the night walking through the forest, but she saw no hint of dawn. Once something brushed past her and she nearly turned back; once she saw the hint of a luminous bird flying far off and away from them, the only bright thing in all those dark woods. And through it all Brownie had to stop and choose their path perhaps a dozen times, until she thought that they must be hopelessly lost.

Finally he raised his head, as if sniffing the air. They began to hurry, tripping over roots and breaking through hanging branches. Once she thought they might have left the path altogether. The animal's howl came again, closer this time.

Something impossibly bright shone through the dark leaves of the forest. As they drew nearer Alice saw that it was a silver hill, almost perfectly circular. Beside her Brownie breathed a sigh of relief. “We're here,” he said. “I'm home.”