Going Under (29 page)

"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 blabbing 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."

They assented to each other first, with a look, then fell in just behind her as she began to follow some path of her own through the trees. "Don't you like j ... him then?" Lila asked. She wanted to defer the decision process as long as possible, and to find out if she could somehow get her hands on Malachi's doll.

Gulfoyle bent her head over the doll, muttering, then upped her volume until Lila and Zal could hear. "It's not for the slave to speak of the master," she said, and glanced coyly sideways at Lila. "Do you know how many turns we have taken around?"

Lila shook her head. "Around where?"

"Around the year," Gulfoyle said. "Turn and turn again but always come back to the same still point which will not budge. Even been round backwards, to check, like the screw in its path, but unlike the screw we turn and we turn but we don't get down. Winter to spring to summer to autumn. Ten and ten again thousand turns. Stuck. All of us. Stuck with each other and the round." Her voice varied as she spoke, sometimes almost laughing, then abruptly bitter and full of anger. "At least you're not his. Else I wouldn't have spoke to you. You'd have died and been my trees, like the others he sends forwards to taunt me." She pointed to the side and they both saw a twisted trunk with a face, warped and tormented, caught within it, part of the wood.

"Mistress!" it whispered as she passed it. "Please let me out. I done nothing!" But she ignored it completely and trod on. Soon they had left it behind but by then there were others near them. Their voices were much spoiled by becoming wooden. Their pleading sounded like knocking, or the sighing of the wind. Gulfoyle paid no attention to them.

"Can I see my messenger?" Zal asked her, moving to place himself between her and Lila.

"Maybe," she said. "If you promise to give him back."

"I will," he said.

She handed him the grass doll and quickly stepped sideways, stifling a yawn. She shook herself and gave him a speculative look, darting a gaze at Lila, checking their reactions to each other.

Lila didn't care for the sizing up. She leaned into Zal and heard the doll whisper, its voice all but completely nullified by Zal's andalune body which reached out to smother it, touching Lila's face at the same time in the softest of caresses.

"Malachi says the only one you can trust is the woman on the wolf. He'll look for you at the Twisting Stones."

"Can you go back to him?"

"No. Stuck now. Like you all. Stuck in the turns. Don't give me back that witch. She'n use me."

"If I don't you owe me," Zal said.

"You drowned me last time!" the doll said.

Lila frowned, not understanding.

"And this time I'll undo you, but those are your choices."

The doll grumbled but gave a nod. "Next time, elf, you ..."

But Zal's quick fingers had already loosened its clever twist. "Oh!" he said, faking surprise convincingly. He showed the grass to Gulfoyle's disappointed face. "Made to fall apart. Shoddy work."

"Your friend, the sender, warns you against us all, no doubt," she said, striding ever onward at the same pace, her twig hair shifting as though it was soft and disgorging a small grey owl that flew back the way they had come.

"Thank you for your stories," Zal said, "but unless you have more business we are done and will say goodbye." He stopped walking. "I guess you are signalling to those who follow."

"But I have not told you everything," the faery said, coming to a halt and turning back halfway. The wind stopped and the forest fell quiet. Lila couldn't help feeling that it was an ominous change.

"We aren't a curious bunch," Zal said lazily. "And we have to go somewhere."

Gulfoyle hesitated and her demeanour changed from haughty to slightly piqued. "I have not had a visitor of any kind in fifteen thousand years," she said, musingly. "And here you are, killing my jacks with iron and tricking me out of trinkets. I offer you nothing but kindness, and you spurn me. That is cold, elf. That is right cold."

"Your borrowed crows mean nothing to you," Zal replied easily. "And your age-old quarrel means nothing to me. A doll is a curse waiting, as you well know. We end as we began, curious and nothing else. Unless you wish to ask a favour?"

Tath circled uncomfortably. He was thrumming with attention. Y/aas is an ancientlaryaininy dance, he said, and didn't like it at all. f/pe Zaf.Tnou%s tnie tune.

Lila narrowed her eyes and listened. She kept silent and still, watching Zal's confidence with pleasure. She knew moments like this were always dangerous and nobody would show their true feelings but she liked to see him work. She just liked to see him.

The faery laughed, a surprisingly merry sound and inclined her chin, turning to her best angle. "What favour have you to offer?"

"I'd guess Jack is one of the Huntsmen."

"Nay, Giantkiller is the Lord of this place," Gulfoyle assented. "The Huntsman is close by his heel always. It is the Huntsman's pain to be locked in the round with such a master, but master Jack is."

"And you in his debt also or else why walk before him?"

"The debt is his, elf, make no mistake. This land is mine. He treads it by force. Had I the means to stop him I would take them," she said so quietly it was hard to hear her. At this speech even the drops of water falling from the leafless trees stopped in midair and hung there. "But his city is full of his allies and I am alone. He nears. Hurry if you wish to speak unheard."

"We have come to free the Master of the Hunt," Zal said.

Inside Lila's chest Tath became poised and still. To muc/

The faery peered at him and without apparently moving was suddenly as close to both of them as she could come, and just as far away as she had to be without falling unconscious-a few feet. "But how? The Master is with all the other fell things below. Jack has spent the long ages of men searching for a way down and found nothing. Aye and we have helped him in the hopes of freedom and got nowhere. I would be glad to aid you but it is a fool's game. You will fail and Jack will hunt you and eat you."

"Can you help us?"

"Yes," she said. "I will give you this advice. When you leave me you will see a peak divided in two as if split by a bolt from heaven. The stones of which your doll spoke lie at its foot. The path there turns every other direction but you must not leave it or you'll never reach the place you seek. That's all I'll do. And when the time comes for Jack to hunt you down, I'll let him, for I'll not cross him again." She drew back, her face deeply troubled. She looked at Lila and her gaze flickered over the T-shirt again.

Tath? Lila whispered, seeing Zal frowning and disappointed.

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"Keep your joke close, lady. Keep your iron ready. Pray for your friends, that they not meet Jack's wolves, nor you either. I would say more, but you lied to me so you must chance your wits against the rest. Maybe I'll change my mind later and you can choose what kind of tree you'd prefer to be."

at least s~ie is zva~/ enou yli to Ie we us for tyre time 6ein y.

With that the wind started again, a cold spatter of water hit Lila's cheek, making her start and blink, and when she brushed herself dry and looked about her the wood had gone and they stood at the foot of a hill in unmarked snow, a moon just starting to rise behind them and no sign of life in any direction. Against the span of the stars the broken peak showed clearly, like a black cutout. Beneath their feet a path of sorts was visible, marked by the smoothness of the snow that lay on it compared to the rougher shapes of the surroundings.