Going Under (33 page)

Where there had been open ground there was now a street, and streets beyond it. They turned, supporting one another, and saw not only the place where they stood but all the land beyond that. Yet further on winding streets, bridges, avenues, and lanes lay mantled in white snow. They were standing high above most of it, looking over a low wall and cliff side where their little hill had been. And then they turned, and at their backs saw the grey granite and blue ice of a fortress with white gulls wheeling around its ramparts.

A herald in striped clothes went running past them suddenly, ringing a bell. "Night fall is come! Nightfall! Two nights until Midwinter! Two nights to the turning point!" They were alone after he had gone, and then they were not alone. But although the difference was profound and unmistakable, still there was nobody else to be seen.

"What's this Mog? Has my wife been taking pot shots again?" said a voice; a silky, warm, and rich man's voice with a crafty ring to it. It came from all directions at once.

"She missed me, sir," Moguskul said in that odd, quiet way of his. He was lost, Lila knew it. He, like Gulfoyle, had thought for seconds of his old freedoms, but then thought of this creature, this faery, Jack, and had given themselves up. Just like that. She ought to be afraid of Jack, but she wasn't. She didn't even despise him for what he'd done.

It was curious to her, and she held this feeling close to her heart as she stood, feeling Zal's hand in her hand no heavier than a spectre's touch but the strength and heat of him was intoxicating still.

A sparkle of bright lime scattered between them. It got up Zal's nose and he sneezed. Lila laughed, and the city, and Moguskul, looked up.

hey reached the Twisting Stones at moonset. Madrigal was waiting for them, a small dark shape hunched over a tiny fire, her guns sticking up at her back like wayward posts in a fallen scarecrow. She showed no sign of noticing them until they were right up to the firelight themselves, then looked up, as if they had always been there.

"Their tracks vanish at one of the hidden crossroads," she said, picking up a twig that hadn't burned through and poking it about in the flames. "My guess is that I was too slow. They must have been overtaken by Gulfoyle or Namaquae. I saw Moguskul out searching for them too. He found the same trail and I was set following him but he got away from me. Jack's storms ..." She sighed. "The city is set for night now. If they're not there then they're close to it." She pushed the twig into the heart of the fire, twisting it in her fingers. As it caught light a burning image of a tiny tree appeared just above it and she whispered to it, "Somersfal. Plague our dear one, melt his bones, let him know we mean trouble." The tree flickered, became the figure of a tiny dryad, and zipped off over the snow; a cinder soon lost to sight.

"What was that?" Malachi asked.

"A spirit of ancient summers," Madrigal said. "I like to tease him." She smiled to herself and frowned at the same time, then looked up at him. He felt himself grow warm though she was doing nothing. "What is this group of yours, Cat? Why so long since you came here?"

He introduced the others briefly and avoided answering her second question because he didn't want to say that it was easier not to see her, when she couldn't or wouldn't leave and he wasn't ready to find out which. Madrigal remembered the fey once she heard their namesbecause they were undying it was common to meet and then lose contact with others over ages, forget them, then remember upon meeting again, and none of them minded. She lingered over Teazle, looking at him closely.

"What is your fire?" she asked him after a moment, breaking into Malachi's explanation of their sooty disguises.

"Death," he said. "And yours?"

She reached inside a fold of her furs and brought her hand out, held shut. She turned the palm up, held it towards him, and opened her tawny fingers to reveal a single perfect strawberry, shining with the old golden sunlight of a long-ago day. The smell of the ripe berry filled the icy air for a second before the wind snatched it away. "Fruit," she said, smiling slowly, her eyes looking up from low lashes.

Malachi prickled with envy and irritation. She had given him an apple once, and he had kept it safe. Even now it was hidden away up the years in his bower, in the jungle; red and green apple, fresh with dew that tasted sweet and salty on his tongue every day when he licked it. He was astonished when Teazle grinned, reached out and took the berry, and bit through it with his sharp white teeth. Juice ran down his chin and he licked it off with his unseemly large tongue, then ate the rest with a single bite.

"Thank you," he said thoughtfully.

Madrigal raised an eyebrow but then her attention moved back to Malachi. "So?"

"I didn't want to be here," he said. "Too much chance of getting caught."

"Fneh, Jack couldn't catch you," she said. "I think you prefer life in the other worlds."

"Maybe so," he said. He felt unaccountably strange, seeing her after such a long time apart.

"What do you say, Nixas?" Madrigal asked, indicating that they could, if they wished, share her fire.

All of them except the demon crowded around.

"I say, I say, I say," Nixas began softly, staring into the flames. "What begins with the dark and ends in the dark and has no body to speak of?"

"Cold, dead Jack," Madrigal said. "Too easy. Why you think of that?"

"It will be midwinter night day after tomorrow."

"The day he dies," Malachi said, licking his lips unconsciously with the memories of that same day ages past. He glanced at Madrigal but she was introspective, fire-staring.

She gave a soft laugh. "Jack's holiday it is, we say. Three moons in the lands of the dead, in his other home."

"Mad," Malachi said urgently. "My friend has the key. I believe it brought her here. This year it will turn the lock, Jack or no Jack." He explained as best he could about the humans' problem-his problem -with the Mothkin, their need to find a hunter capable of gathering them.

"And that's all? You think the key rose from darkness just to help the humans out of some little faery fix?" she was openly astonished.

"When you put it that way," he said, "no."

"It is that way," she said shortly. "Who found it first?"

"Me," Viridia said, putting up a small hand. She was wrapped up in her own hair, arms clutching her bony knees to her chest, her nose and the ends of her long ears red with cold. She sniffed. "It was on the bottom of this lake. I just happened to be there."

Madrigal made a face to show how much store she set by this information. "What lake? When?"

Viridia rolled her eyes as if it was all too tedious for words and gave one of those teenage twisting shrugs that says everything that's happening is a torment to the soul. "That one in Alfheim. With the dragon in it. When Zal got stolen and the witchy elf woman wanted to stick him with a blood pact. We was there to rescue 'em and it was a big battle in the water and we went down a long way ..." she coughed slightly and muttered something which made Malachi guess she was fudging something ". . . and I got all the way to the very bottom-which is a long long way down, let me tell you, much further than any faery might ever have gone bef . . . " she caught the expression of those watching her and said primly, with pique, "There was this shelf, the last bit of the world, sticking out into nothing, into the Void, where all the water was hanging at the Dragon Gate-not that you'd know what one of them is-anyway, right on the edge of this shelf of rock was a load of stuff that'd fallen in over the years and got right down to the bottom. There was all sorts, I can tell you, like jewels and bones and this book with a big clasp on it and some old writings and daggers and a headband made out of gold ..

"Vee!" Poppy snapped.

Viridia shot her a look. "The key was right on the edge. Right so close to the edge that if I'd have tried to pick it up the wrong way I'd have just pushed it over. And the fighting up above had made the water move ... and I had too ... and the water was nudging it along and it was about to go over and I wanted to pick up some of the other things but I thought the Gate might not like me being there too much because it was starting to do something and I thought that anything that was about to go over was something that must've been there the longest and was probably the most interesting and valuable so I just grabbed it and came back up before the dragon got there."

"And what made you give it to this Otopian woman?" Madrigal demanded, trying but failing not to express impatience. "Did you know what it was?"

"I put it under me pillow and had a dream that night. We was campin' in the elf woods looking for Zal and Lila and we found them but they was ... busy ... so we just set ourselves up a way off and went to sleep and I dreamed something big and dreadful and frightening was coming and that faery was going to be reversed because of this thing so I guessed it might be the Key and then Pop and me decided we didn't want it so we thought we'd pass it on to someone who'd keep it safe on account of not knowin' what it was at all and not bein' a faery."

"She was the best person," Poppy said defensively. "She's lethal and completely bad tempered. And she was nice to Zal and he's one of them that the Kindly Ones like, so he's not easy to fiddle with either so ..

Madrigal held her hand up. "I get it. But now, just a few months later, here she is in Jack's City. Cat," she looked up, "you must have known something about this. She is your ally."

"I thought she'd keep it far from here," he said.

"Do you think she's one of the ones?" Madrigal asked after a minute thinking.

"What does that mean?" Teazle said, surprising them, because he'd been so silent.

"One for the Hall," Poppy said. "We thought Zal was one, but then it turned out he wasn't."

Viridia nodded.

"One what?" Teazle demanded.

"Someone who should be lost," Malachi said. "One of the Champions of the Light. Individuals with great power of some kind, combined with a passion for doing the right thing."

Poppy continued to nod enthusiastically. Her feelings shifted with violent speeds but they never wavered. "You know how dangerous they are. We like to find them and then ..."

"... lose them." Viridia said. "Strategic'ly. So as things don't get bad. So we've got a Hallway in Under that we use to lose them."

"Wouldn't it be better to lose the ones with a passion for doing the bad thing?"

Viridia looked at Teazle as if he'd lost his mind. "No no. They extinguish themselves. Piffling minor they are. Easy to spot, easy to kill. Quite pathetic really. Devils won't even touch them. It's the ones who think they're doing good you have to watch out for. Didn't your mother teach you anything?"

"I could never stomach her advice," Teazle grumbled with a wry snort that sounded a lot more beastlike than angelic.

"You're all getting way ahead," Madrigal stated with the authority of one who has heard it all a thousand times before. "Your immediate problem is that Jack wants the key, your friend has it, and she is no doubt with Jack now. If he gets his hands on it then he will open everything, not just the Hall."

"Why?" Teazle asked.

"Because of the Queen's magic," all the faeries said at once in a singsong way as if it was the most obvious answer in the world, ever.

"Indulge me," the demon suggested. "Unless we're going off to Jack's place now for some killing you may as well fill me in on the reasons for said killing. I assume there's going to be killing?"

"Probably," Malachi said, shivering. "What're your swords made of, by the way?"

"Some kind of light," Teazle said in a tone that wasn't interested. "But tell me about the Queen. Sounds sexy."

The faeries hesitated as one.

"The trouble is," Malachi said after they all shared a look without Teazle and came to the conclusion that he was the spokesperson, "we've been stuck so long here that we don't remember the answer. Everyone remembers "the queen's magic," but nobody actually knows what that means anymore."

Madrigal nodded. "All the fey exist at all levels of faery-all the true fey, I should say-across time, but this place has been stuck fast, nobody has gone beneath it or travelled up past it since the time of the fall, when ... the trouble is that we like to put important information and things where they can't be found by accident, or tripped over, or used unwisely ..."

"To hide something is to lose it," Poppy put in eagerly. "Otherwise, it's not properly hid."

"And so," Malachi concluded, "we'd like to tell you, but we can't."

"I see," said Teazle, marvellously amused. "So the answer to our problem is down below, where we can't get at it. You think it would be bad for this Jack person to get the key and undo the lock ... but really you can't be sure about that."

"It must be bad, or it wouldn't be lost," Viridia pointed out, her voice rising at the end of her statement to indicate that she was declaring the obvious to an idiot, lifting her chin as she did so.

"Touche," Teazle said. "I don't need to know stories. I need to know how to get to my wife. Where is she, Fruits?" He looked expectantly at Madrigal and licked his lips again.