The Key to Starveldt (6 page)

With fluttering, graceful steps, the woman moved forward.

‘I am Anise.’ Reaching up, she brushed Solace’s cheek before letting her hand fall back. ‘Do not be alarmed. You are safe.’

‘Wasn’t alarmed,’ Solace mumbled. Abashed, she forced herself to look Anise squarely in the eye. ‘Well, I was. But only a little.’

Anise laughed. It was a pretty sound, rippling like the music of an underwater bell.

‘You are honest,’ she said, smiling again. ‘That is good.’

‘Where are we?’ Electra asked.

Belatedly, Solace thought to look somewhere
other
than at their host, and realised their location resembled the lobby of a glamorous hotel. The floor underfoot was white marble. Ahead lay a grand staircase of the same stone, covered with red carpet as it flowed up to a landing that diverged into two separate flights, each leading to a different level. On either side of their point of entry, a marble hallway, lined with elegant portraiture and bric-a-brac, stretched off into the distance.

‘This is the Rookery,’ Anise said. ‘I assume that this is your first time among us. Repeat visitors rarely materialise in this place.’ She waved a hand to indicate the lobby.

‘Something like that,’ said Solace, glancing at the others. Paige looked awed, Jess still slightly cross, Electra thoughtful. Manx and Harper were taken up with not staring at Anise, but Evan, to Solace’s surprise, seemed to be experiencing no such difficulty. Instead, he was watching Laine from the corner of one eye. Under this subtle scrutiny the psychic stood rigid, as though she were aware of his attention, but not wanting to show it. Solace felt the Vampire Cynic take note.
Interesting.

‘You asked us to wait,’ said Jess, after a brief pause.

Anise nodded. ‘I did, and I appreciate your compliance. You must speak with the owner.’

‘Liluye.’ Solace exhaled the name.

‘Not because you spoke her name. Your cargo makes it necessary.’ Anise motioned towards Solace’s jacket pocket. ‘The Rookery has a cautious policy toward objects of power. That which you carry activated certain of our wards, the effect of which is to blind and bind while notifying me. Had you tried to leave the lobby before I stopped you, the result would have been – well, unnecessary, let us say.’ Her gaze flicked upwards, momentarily lighting on each of them. ‘But I am sure there will be no problem. Liluye will discern the truth of the matter.’

‘This Liluye,’ Manx began, nervously licking his lips. ‘Is she – I mean, is she like you?’

Anise’s face deepened in a humour. Her mouth and eyes were incredibly expressive, so that even the subtlest change registered with beautiful clarity. Solace had initially taken her for Rare, but now found herself wondering whether she might be something else entirely.
Surely it’s not
that
crazy an idea
.

‘Liluye is unlike anyone,’ Anise replied cryptically. Before Manx could ask what this meant, however, the blue woman cocked her head and held up a finger, her slender ears (or possibly her antennae) receiving some private message.

‘She is ready,’ Anise murmured, after a slight pause. ‘Please follow me, and keep together. You will have an opportunity to ask questions – soon.’

This last request forestalled both Jess and Harper, whose partially open mouths slid closed with the smooth synchronicity of car windows.

Beckoning, Anise turned and walked toward the main staircase. Solace was not alone in gasping at the sight of her not-so-bare back.

‘She has
wings
,’ breathed Paige, speaking for everyone.

They were so fine – and, like the rest of Anise, blue – that nobody had noticed them before. The bone and musculature on which they balanced protruded neatly from her back, eerily akin to what Solace had once imagined dragons having. They were currently tucked away, the long, blue-skinned upper bones folded down against their shorter, stronger counterparts, while segmented flashes of dragonfly gossamer shivered between them like molten silver. Sensing their scrutiny, Anise turned on the third step, raising an eyebrow in quiet rebuke for their dawdling. Guiltily, they caught up with her.

‘The Rookery is larger than you think,’ she said, turning away. ‘It would not do to lose yourselves.’ Her folded wingtips fluttered.

When they reached the landing, Anise led them up and right, following the lower staircase until it flattened out into a sinuous walkway. Solace ran her hand along the smooth wood of the balustrade until the encroaching wall cut it short and the entrance lobby vanished from sight.

The corridor ahead was broader than she’d expected, with doors only on the left-hand side. Most were wood, and many had glass windows cut into the top half, reminding Solace of some classic private investigator’s office. She tried to look in the first few, but the glass was fogged and rippled, and she saw nothing but the blur and glow of fluorescent lights.

Soon, they reached a T-junction; Anise glided left, and they followed in ever-deepening silence, uncertain of what to say, or of what could be said. Thus far, the Rookery felt like a magic place, some strange conspiracy of the senses that, along with Anise, seemed far too fey to be anchored in reality. As though the building itself were determined to prove this point, a low buzz emanated from somewhere up ahead. Manx and Solace, whose senses were sharpest, heard it first. The others reacted individually: a Mexican wave of puzzlement. After the initial shock had worn off, and as the sound grew louder, Solace realised the buzzing was actually familiar. It was like the distant noise from the Gadfly on the first night she’d met her friends, washed through walls and watered down, but unmistakeable. The sound of a crowd.

‘What
is
the Rookery?’ she asked, unable to stop herself.

Anise didn’t answer immediately, but the rustle of her wings gave Solace the impression that the query pleased her. Abruptly, they turned another corner, stepping into an open foyer even larger than the lobby. Bare white marble glowed underfoot, and though several other slim passages opened into the space, their little group stood alone. The noise was louder here, washing against their ears like the growl of ocean waves chewing a pebbled beach. Solace looked up: the foyer roof was so high that it resembled the inner dome of a cathedral, vaulting overhead in arched stone beams and curving panels. Before them stood massive double doors of dark wood. Resting one slim hand on a long brass handle, Anise came to a halt and turned to face them. Her alien eyes were wide and bright, glowing with insect intensity and devilish with human glee.

‘We are givers of sanctuary,’ she said, ‘on whom the pale moon gleams. We shelter the Rare, and those who are human, and those who are neither, and all who ask. We are a circus and burlesque show, a brothel, a convent and den of thieves; a worship of writers, a talent of gamblers, a skirl of pipers and banner of knights; a coven of witches, a host of angels, remade dreams and a city of lights. We are isangelous, curious, furious, furtive, fatuous, dangerous, slanderous, libellous and lycanthropic, anachronistic and metempsychotic. We are archaic and we are brave, futuristic, forgotten and grave. We are the Rookery, flotsam of worlds.’

Her voice had been building in pitch and intensity until, with a cry of laughter, she flung wide the doors, revealing a world of riotous, glorious, glittering chaos.

Solace felt her heart stop, and could sense that her friends, too, were similarly overwhelmed. Anise met her incredulous gaze, and when she spoke again, the blue woman’s words were soft, and for Solace alone.

‘Welcome to the universe, child. We’ve been waiting for you.’

T
hey stood in the doorway for several long minutes, watching. Anise moved to one side, lips quirked in pleasure at the exhilaration of her charges.

They were looking at another world.

Before them stretched a flight of broad, shallow stairs that looked like they belonged to an ancient temple. Made of an unusual white stone, the steps were flanked on either side by rows of giant animal statues carved from the same material, each depicting an exotic and unfamiliar species cavorting atop a column-style base. Solace found herself clinging to this, savouring the familiar concepts of shape and stone as she gathered herself to process the rest of the impossible scene, every aspect of which rioted for her attention in a kaleidoscope of colour, sound and mind-bending variety.

The steps flowed into lilac-hued grass, which stretched out as far as she could see – a fantastic purple carpet for an intergalactic, trans-dimensional carnival populated by the strangest, most beautiful and startling array of people she’d ever seen. The crowd was in its tens of thousands, spilling down gentle slopes and around the contours of fabulous structures – silken tents, natural fortresses built around twisted trees, apartment blocks carved of glowing blue stone, lean-tos made of massive bones – and others so normal in their wood and concrete facades that they appeared lost. A teeming array of stalls were clustered along the walls of the temple-building, forming a melee of sound and scent as hawkers proffered their wares. Like something out of
The Arabian Nights
, different vendors were extolling the virtues of fruits, spices, jewellery and even live animals, but many of the vendors and their would-be customers were like nobody Solace had ever seen.

As she watched, a woman who would have been twin to Anise, but for her rose colouring, led a zebra through the crowds, occasionally stopping to sell a glittering object plucked from the panniers on its back. Nearby, a feathered lizard gesticulated at the wares of a golden-skinned woman with multifaceted eyes. A squat, horned man made what Solace supposed was a joke, causing his burly female companion to roar with laughter and clap her three arms – one made of flesh, and two mechanical – to her armoured ribs. There was no scrap of comforting normalcy to light on, no sight which did not clamour for inspection: here an albino woman and a coalblack man balanced atop a pair of rolling balls while juggling lit torches; there, a row of ancient TVs with concave screens showed a boxing match to a roaring circle of green-and-silver-skinned creatures.

Every combination of physical disparity imaginable was represented. Strangers whose bare skin rippled like oil, flashing vibrant honey-golds, icy silvers and scintillant purples in equal measure, their hair glowing eerily even at a distance. Men and women with full-body tattoos, missing or extra limbs, mechanical and cybernetic upgrades, wings, tails, feathers, fur, and everything in between – a fabulous patchwork of sentience. Solace was so overwhelmed by the human/inhuman element that it wasn’t until Jess gasped and pointed overhead that she even noticed the sky. Awash with swirls of silver-blue-purple like a Van Gogh midnight, the celestial vault was lit by a proliferation of massive white stars, but was utterly absent of either sun or moon.

Everything was aglow with unearthly light, or twilight, or magic, or some ethereal combination thereof, so beautiful and frightening that Solace didn’t know whether to scream, laugh, or close her eyes. She had never dreamed of a place so strange; had never, even since her ordeal in Sanguisidera’s dungeon, contemplated what other marvellous realms might exist beyond the humming structure of the air – not like this, never like this. For an instant, she felt a surge of such perfect kinship with the universe that it was like being on the cusp of death, yet never so alive, as though she were capable of sprouting wings and ascending to those glorious albino stars.

‘Wow,’ she said, then choked on laughter at the inadequacy of the sentiment.

‘We came here through
underground parking
?’ asked Evan, more than a little incredulous. ‘We did, right? I mean, through a
garage
?’

Anise fluttered her wings with apparent good humour. ‘The door through which you entered predates its current surrounds. Once, it was a place of importance. A wise man lived nearby.’

‘The Judge’s House,’ Laine murmured, to everyone’s surprise.

‘That is correct. But long before then, even. For many, many centuries, it was a place of power to the ancestors of those whose lands your own progenitors eventually claimed as their own. Such is the way of history. Once, it was a sacred habitation. Now, it has become a dingy home for machines that drink the blood of fossil-plants older than your species. Turn, turn, turn.’

Solace barely heard any of this. So thoroughly overwhelmed was she – as, indeed, was everyone else – that her sensory perception seemed to have narrowed to what came in through the eyes. Even so, the comparatively innocuous sight of a stranger walking up the temple steps completely passed her by, as did Anise’s murmured, respectful greeting.

‘Who bears the key to Starveldt?’

The question rocketed through Solace. Jerked out of her trance, she was startled to realise that the question had originated from a striking woman standing not two metres away. As Anise stepped demurely aside, the woman chuckled – a soft sound, given the background noise, but one which nonetheless raised the hair on the back of Solace’s neck, and drew the attention of her friends. Almost as a single organism, eight pairs of eyes swivelled and blinked a bleary double take.

‘Hello,’ said the woman. ‘You may know me as Liluye. And you, it seems, are Solace Eleuthera.’

‘Yes,’ said Solace, unable to manage anything else. In her own way, Liluye was just as striking as Anise, but that came more from the strength of her presence than physical incongruity. She was taller than Evan, and at first glance appeared no older than her mid to late twenties. But Liluye’s eyes were tawny-bright and aged, as deep and fathomless as night, as impossible to stare into as the sun. Dreadlocks the colour of new copper brushed her shoulders, vibrant against smooth brown skin only a shade lighter than Harper’s. She was dressed in a leather vest that showed her muscular arms to good effect and a full-length, dusk-red skirt, which exposed her bare feet. One prominent dreadlock, braided with a trio of hawk feathers, stood out against her neck. Her nose was strong, but not masculine, and her face wore a smile, quirked at the corners of a broad, expressive mouth.