The Faerie Lord (31 page)

Despite Lorquin’s reassurances, it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t all up to Ino either. The entire tribe formed themselves into a circle again; three of the drummers pushed to the front and began to beat out a steady, complex rhythm. The sounds had an immediate affect on Ino, whose eyes rolled back in his head so only the whites were showing. Then he began to shuffle forwards and backwards in short, random movements. After a while he started to drool, then convulse. Henry watched him nervously. The shaman looked much like a B-movie zombie.

Henry’s nervousness increased when he tore his eyes away from Ino to glance around the assembled tribe. Many – face it, Henry,
most
– of them had rolled-back eyes now and were swaying in time with the rhythm as if they’d fallen into trance. Even Lorquin looked slack-jawed and dazed.

Several of the women began to dance again, but it was a wild, discordant dance that sometimes led to their colliding with one another. Several of the men burst into loud, erratic shouts. The whole scene had the feel of something that was gradually getting out of control and Henry didn’t like it. What he liked even less was the fact that the weird drum rhythm was getting to him as well. His eyes felt heavy and his mind kept getting soggy so that he had to jerk his attention savagely to stop himself falling asleep.

But then the drumming stopped. At once there was a shrill ululation from the women and Ino flung himself violently on the ground to begin spinning like a break-dancer. His eyes were glazed and dead, every limb spastic. Then he started to bang his head on the flagstones. To Henry’s horror, it made a crunching sound.

‘I say -‘ Henry put in nervously.

Ino responded to Henry’s voice as if he’d been stung. From flat on the ground he made an impossible leap high in the air to land in a squatting position. He gave a gut-wrenching scream.

‘Charaxes!’ chanted the tribe at once. ‘Charaxes! Charaxes! Charaxes!’

From his squatting position, Ino glared up at Henry like an angry dog. The resemblance was so striking that for a moment Henry thought he might actually attack; then his eyes closed, his face went entirely passive and his lips began to move. The tribe stopped its chant at once.

Henry pushed aside his fear and squatted beside Ino. The shaman’s mumbling sounded like a two-way conversation heard through a thick door, but Henry could not make out a single word. ‘What?’ Henry asked. ‘What are you saying?’

Then Lorquin was by Henry’s side. ‘Don’t speak, En Ri,’ he said quietly. ‘Ino talks with your Charaxes.’

Henry waited. Ino turned to him abruptly. ‘I see him,’ he said.

‘See who?’ Henry asked foolishly.

‘I see your Charaxes. He wishes you to say why you did not do as he instructed you.’

Henry looked at the shaman blankly.

The shaman stared into his eyes, blinked twice and said, ‘He has taken my filament.’ The voice he used was a woman’s voice and Henry recognised it at once.

Henry went cold. ‘Blue …?’ he whispered. His stomach knotted. Was Blue already dead?

‘I can’t find my way back,’ Ino said.

‘Blue? Blue, where are you?’

‘In the dark,’ said Ino clearly. The voice was sounding more like Blue each second.

‘What filament?’ Henry asked. ‘Who has taken it?’

‘The clown,’ Blue said. ‘He took it.’

It was making no sense at all. But the voice was Blue’s voice: he was certain of that. Somehow he was talking to Blue through the mouth of the Luchti shaman. ‘What clown?’ Then, more urgently, ‘Where are you, Blue?’

‘The serpent will get me,’ Blue said. She sounded dreamy, as if she was half asleep.

This was getting worse and worse. Henry felt like taking Ino and shaking him, except that one look at Ino’s face was enough to show the shaman was no longer there. His eyes, which had looked blind before, now seemed fathomless and empty. He had sunk down from his squatting position so that now he was seated on the ground, every muscle relaxed like a rag doll. With a massive effort Henry forced himself to be calm. ‘You’re being attacked by a serpent?’ If she was being attacked by a serpent, there was nothing he could do, nothing at all. Even if miraculously she was only half a mile away, he could not get to her in time to save her.

‘Soon,’ Blue said in her dreamy voice. ‘The Trickster took my filament.’

Since clowns and serpents and filaments made no sense, Henry concentrated on the one thing that might. ‘Where are you, Blue? You have to tell me where you are.’

‘In the dark,’ Blue repeated; to Henry’s horror her voice seemed to be fading.

‘In the dark
where?’
he asked desperately. ‘Are you in the Palace? Are you in the city? Blue, where
are
you?’

Blue said something, but so faintly now that Henry couldn’t catch it.

In a mounting panic he reached out to grip Ino’s arm. ‘Where are you, Blue?’ he shouted. ‘Please, darling, tell me where you are!’

‘She’s in the Mountains of Madness,’ Ino said crossly in Mr Fogarty’s voice. ‘And don’t call me “darling” .’

‘Do you have a diagnosis?’ Madame Cardui asked, buttoning her blouse.

Chief Wizard Healer Danaus, who had carried out the examination with his back turned, said quietly, ‘I’m afraid you test positive.’

‘I have the time plague?’

‘In its early stages, yes.’

They were in the Chief Wizard’s private consulting rooms. There was a guard on the door and military grade privacy spells were in place. With Queen Blue no longer in the Palace, her Gatekeeper dead and Pyrgus in stasis, Madame Cardui was painfully aware the state of her own health had political implications. She said quietly, ‘What do you suggest?’

‘Immediate stasis,’ Danaus said bluntly.

‘Impossible,’ said Madame Cardui. She finished adjusting her clothing and added, ‘You may turn round now.’

Danaus turned his large bulk slowly. He had a sober, strained expression on his face. ‘Impossible …?’ he echoed tiredly.

Madame Cardui said briskly, ‘Until Her Majesty returns, I am needed in the Palace.’

Danaus shook his head. ‘No one is indispensable.’

Madame Cardui sighed. ‘I’m afraid I am, Chief Wizard Healer. At least until Queen Blue returns, and possibly beyond then. It is simply impossible for me to go into immediate stasis.’

‘Impossible or not, it is necessary.’ They stood looking at each other in silence; then, to her astonishment and not a little shock, he reached out to take her hand. ‘Cynthia,’ he said quietly, ‘Prince Pyrgus is a young man -hardly more than a child. You have seen how the fever has ravaged him. Gatekeeper Fogarty was a mature man when he caught the fever. You saw how quickly it killed him.’ He looked deep into her eyes. ‘Forgive me, Cynthia, but you are older even than Gatekeeper Fogarty. You may not feel it, you do not look it, but that’s the simple fact of it: I have your medical records.’

Madame Cardui extricated her hand gently and turned her head away. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s true. Alan never knew how many years there were between us -the difference between faerie and human physiology, of course - and I felt no great need to tell him.’ She looked back at Danaus, her eyes suddenly fierce. ‘But it’s not the age that counts, is it? As I understand this plague, what is really important is the amount of future one has left remaining. Is this not so, Chief Wizard Healer? An eighty-year-old faerie with a hundred years remaining is surely better off than an eighty-year-old human who might be lucky to have ten?’

‘You are not an eighty-year-old faerie,’ Danaus said gently. ‘You do not have a hundred years remaining.’

‘No,’ Madame Cardui agreed, ‘but you take my point.’

‘I understand the point you are making, but there is something else that must be taken into consideration. Our research shows that the disease progresses more quickly when contracted late in life.’

That was something else he hadn’t mentioned before. She blinked, but managed to keep the irritation from her voice. ‘You’re saying that the disease uses up the remaining future of an adult at a faster rate than it uses up the future of a child?’

‘That is exactly what I am saying. The plague is at its most virulent when it first strikes. Had you contracted this disease fifty years ago, it might take months, perhaps even years, to burn up the future you now have remaining. But since you have only just become ill, the time left to you will be short.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘Perhaps very short.’ He looked at her soberly. ‘Your only hope – your
only
hope – is immediate stasis. That at least will keep you alive indefinitely, even if it does not permit you to function.’

‘You did not recommend stasis in the case of Princess Nymphalis.’

‘Your case is entirely different – I’ve just explained that in great detail.’

She knew she was being an irritating old woman. She also knew he had her best interests at heart. The trouble was Chief Wizard Healer Danaus exactly lived up to his title. He was a healer first, foremost, always and nothing more. His grasp of politics was confined to lobbying for an increase in his department’s budget. He saw the time fever solely as a disease to be battled, a plague to be stopped. He had no realisation of its wider implications. He would not see, for example, how it weakened the Realm, left it open to revolution from within or attack from without. He would not see the importance of strong leadership at a time like this. Comma functioned perfectly well as a holding operation, but he did not have the experience to handle an emergency. Danaus could not realise how precarious a position they were all in with their Queen absent. (And Madame Cardui blamed herself for that little eventuality. She should never have allowed Blue to leave the Palace. But she had been so concerned with Alan’s visions that her judgement had been clouded – she admitted that now, at least to herself.)

Madame Cardui took a deep breath. ‘Your diagnosis of my condition is based on early warning signs, is it not?’

‘There is no doubt in my mind,’ said Danaus grimly. ‘You have the fever. To try to convince yourself otherwise would be a grave mistake.’

Madame Cardui shook her head. ‘I understand I have the disease, but the fever has not actually manifested yet.’

‘It could do so literally at any minute.’

‘But until it does, my future is not in peril?’

‘Technically no. But -‘

‘Chief Wizard Healer,’ Madame Cardui said with a note of finality in her voice, ‘there can be no question of placing me in stasis now. I have far too much to do. I would suggest you put a stasis chamber on standby. When the fever manifests, you have my permission to place me in it immediately.’

‘That assumes I, or some other healer, will be with you when the fever manifests,’ Danaus said.

Madame Cardui said nothing.

Danaus said, ‘Madame Cardui, I cannot stress strongly enough the risk involved in what you are asking me to do. At your age, the fever could burn up your available future within an hour or so at most, probably less and possibly a great deal less. If the fever strikes while you are asleep tonight, you will be dead by morning. If the fever strikes while you are alone, you could be dead before anyone arrives to help. Even if the fever strikes while you are surrounded by people and I am miraculously standing by your side, you might be dead before we got you to the stasis chamber.’

‘That’s a risk I’ll have to take,’ said Madame Cardui.

Damn, damn, damn, damn,
damn –
the catsite was wearing off! Blue couldn’t believe it. Of all the foul luck. That creature, that clown, that disguised charno person had snatched her filament and disappeared, leaving her to find her way out of the maze of passages unaided. She might have managed it too – she had a good sense of direction and a fine visual memory – but without the catsite in her system she was blind. Already her eyesight was fading. Where once she could see for yards along the rocky corridor, now only a few steps ahead were visible. Beyond that everything faded into a thickening fog.

Dare she take more catsite?

Fortunately the creature had left her backpack. She rummaged in it now, found the catsite and felt her heart sink. The remaining crystals had clumped together and were in the process of fusing. Catsite did that sometimes if you failed to separate out the crystal structures in advance, which – dammit – she hadn’t. She could break off a portion – she could still do that – but not a small portion. All the fused crystals were far larger than the originals. What it meant was she would have to take a massive second dose … or no dose at all.

Blue forced herself to stay calm. There was a good side and a bad side. The good side was that a massive dose of catsite would last a very long time, probably far longer than she’d need to explore these passages, rescue Henry if he was here, and make her escape. The bad side was a massive dose of catsite would almost certainly kill her.

After a long moment she decided to see how far she could get with the remains of the catsite in her system. No sense risking any more until she absolutely had to. After all, she could still see, if poorly, and she had no way of knowing how long it would be before the catsite cleared her system completely. Enough of it might hang around to let her do what she needed to do.

An hour later, Blue knew it wasn’t enough. She was on her knees in a narrow passageway, near blind now, inching forward more by touch than sight and very much aware she was completely lost. For a moment she experienced a massive sense of desolation. Did it matter if she took more catsite? Even with full vision again she would still be lost. When the creature stole her filament, he took away all hope of orientation. How could she hope to find Henry? How could she hope to rescue him? And if, miraculously, she did, how could they hope to find their way out?

The moment passed and something of her old self-confidence reasserted itself. She was no worse off now than she’d expected to be. If she risked another dose of catsite, there was every chance of doing what she’d set out to do.

She was reaching for the crystals when she saw a pinpoint of light ahead.

It was too good to be true. If there really was a light, it had to be another patch of the luminous fungus she’d seen earlier. But there was no greenish hue. The light was clean and clear, like sunlight. She began to crawl cautiously towards it. Minutes later she knew for certain this was no fungus patch. Minutes more and she was able to stand upright, able to move forward without reliance on the fading catsite. She began to run. She knew she should exercise more caution, but the light was a beacon now; her heart was pumping. This might even be a breakthrough to the surface, a way out, a means of starting again.