Dandelion Fire (32 page)

room was dark with a smudge of light near the top. Henry still couldn't see. The darkness was crawling with movement and wiry shapes, but nothing clear.

He held up his hand, looking for the golden burn on his palm. It was there, bright and crawling, sharper and cleaner and faster the longer he looked at it. It made his head hurt again, throbbing behind his eyes and at the base of his skull. But now when he looked up, he could see.

The walls were solid, earthen in parts, planked with carved wood in others. If he left his eyes anywhere for long, all of it began swimming into strands, woven in place, shaped by strange words he could not speak, though he knew they could be spoken.

“There's so much magic,” he said slowly. “Everything. All of it is magic.”

Monmouth groaned on the floor. He had a lump on his forehead, just below his dark hairline. Streaks of dirt stood out on his pale face. He put his right hand to his head, and Henry watched the burn on his palm. It was green, with flicking, twisting silver.

“You're in a faerie mound,” Monmouth said. “Everything in the world has its hidden glory, its magic. Here it'll be doubled and trebled. They can make things real on many levels.”

Henry blinked, wondering how long he could keep seeing without his head exploding. The door was made of tightly bound reeds. The ceiling was green clay, and a single lamp hung from its center without a chain. He could see the twisting strands that held it up, but he knew they would disappear if he relaxed to his normal sight. The whole place would.

He shut his eyes to let his head recover. “What are we going to do?”

Monmouth's voice was tired, pained. “Apparently, we are waiting for a committee meeting.”

“Does your head always hurt when you, you know, see?” Henry asked. He was grinding his knuckles against his eyebrows, and the pain was actually a relief.

“No,” Monmouth said. “It did. Years ago. But you grow into it. Right now my head hurts because someone clubbed me when they dragged us off.”

“Why?”

“Because I resisted. They tried to numb my legs. They had to use an older technique.”

“What are we going to do?” Henry asked again.

“Henry,” said Monmouth. “I'm going to sleep.”

“Why?”

“Because my head won't hurt in a dream. Talk to me there.”

“What?” Henry asked. But Monmouth didn't say anything else. “Monmouth?”

After a moment, the young wizard's relaxed breathing filled the darkness. Henry stood, shifted his eyes, and ignored the pain in his skull. He walked to the door and pushed on it. There was no handle or latch, so he couldn't pull.

His aching head quickly became impossible to ignore, and looking around made him dizzy. He could see the room in at least three different ways, dark and muddled, shaped and clean, and crawling with sculpted magic. None of them helped him, so he lay down on the floor and closed his eyes.

They were grateful.

“I waited,” Monmouth said. “Your dream is strong. I couldn't keep my own when it came.”

“What?” Henry asked. They were both sitting on the floor in the center of the room. The room was bright and clean. Nothing was writhing. The walls were earth and plank and no more. It was far more sensible than the reality.

“Your imagination is stronger than mine,” Monmouth said. He smiled, and Henry could see that the lump was gone. As Henry thought of it, it appeared. Monmouth grimaced, and his hand shot up.

“Ow,” he said. “Do you mind? I don't have to have it here.”

“Sorry,” Henry said. “I didn't mean to.”

“Take it away, or I might as well be awake.”

Henry tried. Nothing happened. He couldn't dream it away when his mind knew it was really there.

“I'm sorry,” he said again. “I don't think I can.”

Monmouth stood up. “Right. Well, at least it's not as bad here. I already tried to get out. The room is charmed to keep us in.”

“But we're dreaming,” Henry said. “How can they keep us in?”

Monmouth smiled. “You're more than just a body, Henry York.”

“You mean our minds? That's where you dream, right?”

“Your mind is part of your body. This is different. You can shape dreams, but real ones come from outside of you. You learn to travel through them and to ride them, forcing them toward truth if you like, or into fantasy. I've never really been good at it, but there were dozens of old books and scrolls on dream-walking in Carnassus's library. I read most of them.”

Henry looked around the room. Dreams had always been strange to him. Now that he'd been pulled out of one by Darius, and accurately dream-walked Badon Hill, he was prepared to believe anything Monmouth said.

He stepped over to the door and reached out his hand to feel the tight reeds. In Byzanthamum, Nella had said something about dreams. She'd told him to believe his.
How do you believe a dream?
he wondered.
It doesn't say anything.

The reeds felt almost fused together. They probably were. He turned back to Monmouth. The wizard was massaging his head. The lump was smaller, but it grew when Henry looked at it. Then he looked at Monmouth. Really looked at him.

Monmouth looked back, first with anger and then with surprise. Something changed in him, shrouded what Henry was trying to see, but only for a moment. It didn't matter. Henry could still see. Monmouth looked like Nella had, a collection of strong green strands, living words all moving slowly, written on top of each other, tied together, growing together.

But in places there was darkness, stiffness, and stagnation—death, fighting with the rest.

Monmouth's eyes were narrowed. “What do you see?” he asked.

Henry blinked. “What do you?” His head wasn't hurting. He could do this in a dream.

“I see fear and confusion,” Monmouth said. “And damage. There is some strength, but it's all unguided and without purpose, outside your control. And you have a sinkhole in your face. In your jaw. It's small, but it's stronger than the rest of you, and it's growing. What do you see?”

Henry swallowed, wishing he could pull clothes over everything. “I”—he paused—”I don't know.”

“You're not quite as strong as I thought,” Monmouth said. “I don't mean to be rude, it's just that I thought you must be incredible if the witch wanted you so badly.”

Henry put his back to the door and slid down with his knees against his chest. “I know,” he said.

“Did your father really defeat the witch?”

Henry shrugged. “Never met him.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “I'm going to sleep.”

“You can't go to sleep. You're already dreaming. Why would you want to?”

“It won't have to hurt in a dream.”

Henry dreamed that he fell asleep. And so he did.

This time, Monmouth wasn't there. For a moment, Henry could see a faint ghosting of his outline, but he blocked it out quickly. His own shape, equally faint at first, grew stronger until he was looking down at Henry York, sleeping with his knees hugged against his chest. As for himself, the self that was seeing, he was without any shape at all. He lifted what he knew were his arms, but saw nothing. And then, slowly, the head of a stemless dandelion bloomed in midair.

Henry turned, stepped over himself, and walked through the door.

One faerie stood outside, leaning on the jamb, yawning. His arms were crossed, and a stick with a knobbed root end was tucked under one arm.

Henry moved past him and wandered down the corridor. Lamps hung from the ceiling low enough that he ducked around them. Then he wondered if he had to at all. He felt like he had a head to move, but he wasn't sure if he did.

He was looking for stairs or ramps, anything leading up. The corridor was strange. Though extremely earthy, it didn't seem at all dirty. The floors were slate, unlike the dirt floor in his room, and the upper walls were green clay sculpted into panels, sometimes complicated friezes and occasionally a jumble of contributions without any theme whatsoever.

Everywhere he went, the lower walls were paneled with a pale wood, pickled unnaturally white, almost whitewashed, and many of the doors were the same. Others were made of reed, like the one he'd walked through, but still tinted white.

When he found stairs, he went up, hunched into the tightly spiraling space. Two faeries trundled down and straight through him without hesitation, though both shivered as they moved on.

Henry climbed until he had found another level, this one busier, and then he climbed again. The tint of the clay changed, grew smoky, streaked with brown and even red in places, but everything else seemed cut from a mold, though the halls rose and fell and bent and curled beyond the ability or desire of any human architect outside of a madhouse.

Finally, on his fourth level, passing by a group of laughing faeries, he saw a broad, low door. The knob at first looked like iron, but at second glance appeared to be wood with the bark still on, perfectly grown to a functional shape.

Hanging on the knob was a large wooden sign with
carefully painted black letters. Strangely, the painted letters seemed to be in imitation of those on a typewriter, though the artist hadn't been able to resist adding little flourishes on each
t,
and the whole thing had been fancily underlined.

At first Henry wondered if it might be a bathroom, but then he walked in.

The room was posh. Thick red carpet, like an overgrown lawn, covered the floor. A large, round window made up of triangular panes was set into the end. The walls, pale green here, had been smoothed into perfectly rectangular panels. In the center of each, there was a face, the same face, but expressing different variations on a theme—serious. Or maybe pompous. It was fat-cheeked and heavily browed, and it was also sipping a drink in a deep chair by the window.

The faerie that owned it was rather slim, and the heavily featured face was balanced on an oddly slender neck. His hair was cut close on the sides and was bald on the top. He was clean-shaven and wore round, black spectacles. Most remarkably, he was wearing a satin
fuchsia bathrobe that had obviously once belonged to a woman.

Henry remembered his first encounter with Eli and wondered if there was something in faeren blood that made stolen bathrobes attractive.

Two other faeries sat across from him in less comfortable chairs. One had a young-looking face, but his hair was both the color and texture of straightened steel wool. The other was older and fat, much fatter than Frank. His head was completely bald, but he made up for it with an enormous rounded beard below a bare upper lip.

All three of them held glasses full of something thick and yellow, like eggnog. They contemplated it silently.

After a moment, the fat one spoke.

“Who does the milking?” he asked. For all of the softness in his body, his voice was sharp. “The mares,” he added, and lifted his glass.

“Flax,” said the fuchsia faerie. Henry recognized both of their voices from the corridor when he'd arrived. Frank had yelled at them.

“The fermenting?”

“Colly handles that. He is improving.”

The fat faerie nodded slowly, and then, flaring his nostrils, he sniffed at his drink.

“Ralph,” the young faerie asked, “I think we should be discussing the boy. I didn't come here to drink mare's milk.”

The fuchsia faerie turned in his chair, looking out the
window. “Who,” he said quietly, “ever invited you to call me Ralph?”

“Apologies and prostration,” the young faerie said. He obviously didn't mean it. “Chairman Radulf and Mr. Braithwait, what do you intend to do with the boy? Franklin Fat-Faerie is already creating a froth among the younger set, claiming that he's the seventh son of Mordecai. He needs to be dealt with, and soon.”

“He is the son of Mordecai, is he not?” the fat one asked. Henry had him pegged as Braithwait. The other one had to be Radulf, the one who'd sent him his “a lert.”

“He is,” Radulf said, “though no one could ever explain to me how an infant could escape when his father could not.” He sighed. “Incompetence.”

Henry moved closer, put his dream hands behind him, and leaned against the wall.

“Has he been christened?” the young faerie asked.