Dandelion Fire (38 page)

“What?” asked another voice. “What message?”

“The committee is ready to declare. They should be sealing up the sentence now.” Henry had absolutely no idea what Tate was trying to accomplish. But he wished he could see his face, because his voice became wildly exaggerated. If voices could wink, Tate's was winking
heavily. “They'll need someone to run post it on all of the levels.” Wink. “Someone who understands the importance of the case.” Wink. He didn't add
Someone who knows how to type and can fake a seal,
but he may as well have. “So,” Tate finished, “why don't you just run along, then, Pius. It wouldn't hurt to be available.”

“Um—”

“Wait a limp,” came Colly's voice. “What are you trying to pull, Tate? You're not going anywhere, Pius, lad. Nobody's gonna pull a switch while I'm around.”

Tate laughed. “Ridiculous,” he said. “The idea. Well, if you won't do it, Pius, it shouldn't be hard to find someone to ruin—ha—I mean run, the posting.”

Fat Frank rolled his eyes. Henry still didn't understand.

“William Tate,” Colly said. “I've a mind to arrest you right now.”

“On what grounding?” Tate sounded shocked.

“Conspiring to commit anarchy and disrupting the notification of justice.”

“Colly,” Tate said seriously. “You're over-acting. Maybe reading into things a bit too much? What have I said? But I'll stop bothering you both. One way or another, the committee will need someone—hard to find anyone at this hour—and I should be there to help.”

“Oh no you don't!” Colly yelled. Tate cried out in pain. “Pius, you keep an eye on him. Don't let him off the ground till I'm back with Chairman Radulf!”

Roland and Frank wedged Henry and Monmouth
deep behind the door. Feet pounded, and a large faerie lumbered past, even more awkwardly than Roland.

Before he was out of sight, Frank had Henry and Monmouth out from behind the door and through the doorway. Roland pulled it shut behind him.

The hall was a large oval, and its ceiling was domed earth, held up by enormous beams. With a lot of light, and time, Henry would have noticed that the beams had no joints, and that the wooden webbing that ran between them was actually a root system. The faerie mound was crowned by a single enormous tree, and its roots had been trained for centuries.

Henry didn't notice. He was looking at the very center of the large room, where Tate lay facedown on the stone floor, groaning at the feet of a confused faerie. Beside both of them, there was a black hole unguarded by any rail. Stairs descended into it.

Tate propped himself up and grimaced, rubbing the back of his head.

“Down you go,” he said. “Not much time. Even Colly might realize what's happening before too long.”

“What is happening?” the confused faerie asked. “Is that the boy?”

“It is,” Frank said.

The confused faerie coughed, and his eyes moved from faerie to faerie to faerie to Monmouth and finally to Henry. Panic was painted all over his face.

“Are you for Mordecai?” Frank asked.

The faerie nodded.

“Are you for the faeren?”

He nodded again.

“Then you're for him,” Frank concluded, smiling. “Oh, and the wizard's a friend.”

The faerie looked at Henry, at Monmouth, and then back at Frank. “Really?” he asked.

Tate and Roland nodded with Frank.

“Well, that's all right, then,” the faerie said.

Roland gripped Henry's arm, leading him toward the dark hole of a stairway.

“Wait,” the confused faerie said. “Do you have a blue stamp?”

“Oh yes,” Frank said. “But it's in my shoe, and the laces have knotted.”

The faerie thought about this. “All right, then,” he said. “Go ahead.”

Frank stepped around behind him. His arm was so fast, Henry hardly saw it move, but the confused faerie crumpled to the floor. His legs folded up underneath him, and his cheek found its rest on the stones. He looked happier that way. Like he was really understanding life for the first time.

“Sorry, Pius, lad,” Frank said. “But it will be better for you in the end.”

“Maybe,” Tate said. He put his hands on his knees and steadied himself. “That Colly can hit.”

“We need to move,” Frank said. “Lickety-lickety Down the hole. Roland, stick between the boy and the wizard. Tate, follow if you can.” He looked back at the
wobbling faerie with a smile. “If you can't, kiss old Radulf for me.”

Fat Frank stepped onto the stairs and quickly disappeared into the gaping black throat in the floor.

“C'mon, then,” Roland said. “If it gets too much for you, just shut your eyes.”

“What?” Henry asked. “If what gets too much?” His feet were already on the top step. Roland gripped his arm with one hand and Monmouth's with the other. The hole was large, but the stairs, spiraling down around the edge, were not at all wide, especially for three bodies.

“We're going to the center of the mound,” Mon-mouth said. “It's not meant for people.”

“It's not that bad,” Tate said. “Sort of the magical trunk to the magical tree. The corridors and halls are all branches and twigs to this shaft. Everything funnels through here.”

Monmouth wobbled on his feet and quickly shut his eyes. “Don't let yourself look at it, Henry.” He rubbed his forehead. “It's too much.”

“Oh, it's wine to us,” Tate said. “But you have to have a head for it.”

“Hullo?” Frank's voice echoed up from the blackness.

Roland tugged Henry and Monmouth forward. Henry felt Tate's hand on his shoulder behind him.

The darkness was tangible, cool as a mist but not wet. And then they were inside it, and the world was empty.

“Can't we have a light?” Henry asked.

“Wouldn't help,” Tate said quietly. “You couldn't see it.”

Henry swallowed and felt the fog slide down his throat. He kept his shoulder against the wall. “Light won't travel through it?” he asked, simply to keep his mind off what was happening. “But sound does.”

Tate sent out a chuckle that grew until it filled the darkness. “For a seventh son, you don't know much. For the son of a faeren legend, you know nothing. You are standing in enough brightness to feed a forest for a century. This is all light, all around you. Light at rest. It is our strength, the soul of our people.”

“Monmouth?” Henry asked. “Did you know that was possible?”

Monmouth was silent for a moment. “No,” he said. “I still do not. It is beyond me.”

“That's the spirit,” Tate said. “An example to wizards everywhere. We are beyond you.”

Henry's foot hit bottom, and he stumbled forward.

“Alive?” Frank's voice asked.

“Both,” Roland answered.

“Good. Welcome to the roots. The way rooms are this way.”

Henry was dragged forward, a door opened and shut behind them, another opened and slammed, and still they moved on in darkness. Finally, he began to see.

Light was active around head level in the corridor. The darkness settled and dissipated until the walls were bright and only the floor was hidden, and Henry's feet
with it. He felt like he was walking without them, on his shins only.

Frank found a door in the wall, pushed it open, and stepped aside, waiting for everyone to enter.

Henry stepped in and squinted at the brightness inside.

The room was large, circular, and lined with shelves. There were no lamps that Henry could see, no source of light at all. But the room was as blinding as the sun on snow.

“This is active light,” Frank said. “That means it's shiny.”

The other faeries laughed, but Monmouth and Henry both tucked their heads down, tears streaming down their cheeks. Henry's eyes hadn't adjusted, but he wasn't sure they ever would, so he looked up.

The floor of the room sloped gradually down toward the center. Looking at that low point, he almost expected to see a floor drain like in some basement back home. Instead, there sat a broad, smooth stone, six feet across, with two shallow indents carved into its surface a couple feet apart.

The shelves all around the room were lined with jars, from floor to the high ceiling. Near the door, there was a large cabinet, like an old card catalog in a library. Tate and Frank were pulling out drawers and flipping through stacks of small papers inside.

Roland, his hair a vivid pumpkin in the extreme
light, had collected rough sticks from somewhere and was walking down toward the smooth central stone.

Monmouth had finally looked up as well and stood blinking beside Henry.

“Weird, huh?” Henry said.

Monmouth nodded. “How did we come to be here in the first place?” he asked. “We didn't arrive down here.”

Roland looked up from what he was doing. “You come in the branches,” he said. “Go out the roots.” He balanced two sticks taller than he was in the indents on the stone and then set a knobby crossbar over the top.

Tate had found the paper he wanted, and he and Frank had moved on to scanning the shelves. When they found the right jar, Henry watched the faeries move down to the precariously balanced doorway. Tate and Frank dipped their hands in the jar and rubbed water over the surface of the sticks. Then they poured out a small puddle on the stone between them.

Tate slapped wet hands on his cheeks and then replaced the jar on the shelf and the paper in the cabinet.

“Right,” Frank said. “Now's the time. It's not likely that we're heading for any pleasantness, but head we must. Tate?”

Tate nodded, stepped up to the doorway, pulled his yellow hat down tight on his head, turned sideways, and slid through.

For a moment, Henry could see him on the other side. He turned, looked back, and vanished.

“Roland,” Frank said.

“I'll wait,” said Roland. He looked worried.

Frank shook his head.

Roland approached the door, sniffed loudly, and walked through with his shoulders square. Just before he disappeared, Henry thought he saw him trip.

“Monmouth,” Frank said. “Special wizard guest. If my father knew a wizard was seeing the roots of the mound, he'd be likely to die. He's already done that anyhow, so it'd be no great loss.” Frank nodded toward the door.

Monmouth took his place in front of the door and inched forward. He was taller than the doorway, so he ducked his head, bent his knees, and shuffled into nothingness.

Fat Frank looked at Henry, pursed his lips, and rubbed his knob nose with the back of his hand. “Well,” he said. “You've been no end of trouble, I can't lie. I hope you have the zing to make all this worth it. I don't want to ruin my life just to hustle toward the end of yours.”

The two of them looked at each other.

Henry walked to the door and turned sideways like Tate had. They were going toward Hylfing, toward danger. He was hurrying to get in the witch's way, to see Darius again. Ronaldo and Nella had known he would. His hand drifted toward his stomach, feeling the raised-up scars on his belly.

“You know,” Henry said. He was talking more to himself than the faerie, trying to believe something. “A
man once told me that sometimes winning a fight isn't as important as standing in the right place, facing what needs to be faced. And sometimes standing in the right place means you end up dead. And that's better than not standing at all.” Henry twisted around and looked into the fat faerie's dark eyes.

“Oh,” Frank said. “That's a dark bit of philosophy for a lad. Think that way, and all you'll ever get is your name written on a bit of stone. What I say is, don't go playing unless you can win. Only sit down to chess with idiots, only kick a dog what's dead already, and don't love a lady unless she loves you first. That's Franklin Fat-Faerie's—”

Henry was gone.

Frank puffed out his cheeks and pulled a thread from his pocket. “Well, Franklin, that boy's not all cotton fluff, is he?” He began tying the thread around one of the supporting sticks. “He's got it pretty well figured, and you know it. We're all going to get ourselves dead, and only the gulls will want our after-bits. But,” he added, tugging gently on the thread, “I'll do my dying standing on the right spot, beside the son of Mordecai, even if he is a bit of a nunce.”

Frank stepped back, scanning the room once more, looking for anything that could give away their direction. “Nonsense, Frank,” he said. “That's like saying losing's all right so long as you find the person that was supposed to kill you. All I need to do”—he stepped into the doorway—”is get that boy to a christening, even if
he's got but five minutes of life left. That's the goal, Franklin. Then it can be hooves up, if you like, though I'm sure you won't.”

Frank the fat faerie stepped through and disappeared. Then one of the legs of the doorway jerked and fell. The rest followed, clattering in the empty room.

With no ways to brighten and no eyes to blind, the young light slowed and settled, puddling over the sticks and the center stone.

There it slept.

slid through, grazing his legs against rocks on both sides. He was glad he'd copied Tate.