Going Under (34 page)

Madrigal stared at him. "Jack's city," she said. "If you walk in you won't walk out."

"I don't need to walk," Teazle got up and shook some of the darkness off himself. "Who's with me?"

There was a universal pause.

"We fear the unlocking of what lies underneath," Madrigal said, to explain it as Teazle waited. "We don't know what it will mean. Before the fall Faery was a monarchy ruled by the King and Queen and all of us were in their courts, high and low. Since the fall we have been an anarchy. In part we've succumbed to warlordism, like here, where Jack's madness holds sway. But not everywhere. Above, we don't all want to go back to the old ways, but with the return of the old magic the old manner must come back, it's feared."

"Who knows the truth?" Teazle asked.

Madrigal and the girls shrugged. Nixas shook his head hopelessly. But Malachi took a deep breath. The others turned to stare at him.

"The one who knows all of it," he said, with fear and resignation. "The patterner." His voice dropped even further and he whispered, "Lachesis."

"Ahhhh..." sighed the demon and sat back on his heels. "Zal's friend."

Now it was the faeries' turn to stare.

"Is she a faery?" Teazle asked after a second. He genuinely didn't know.

"Not exactly," Malachi said. "In the same way that her sister isn't Dead and her other sister isn't a Ghost."

"Do you demons know something more about the Kindly Ones?" Madrigal asked, her face childlike with attention.

"They are like the angels," Teazle said. "They came before us, or, at least, in a different way. They are closer to the aether, further from matter. This makes them godlike to aetherial creatures, in the way that the ultimate material creation is godlike to material beings."

"We never knew what that last material thing was," Poppy said sadly.

"It's obvious," Teazle replied, and when Poppy gave him a blank look he said, "Lila."

"Who is Lila?" Madrigal said.

"My wife," Teazle said. "But to be more accurate, she isn't yet finished, so I may be premature in calling her into equality with the Fates and suchlike. Certainly she was made by their equivalents in the material plane."

"Others," Viridia whispered, shivering.

"No wonder you were so damn keen to get wed," Malachi snarled.

Teazle laughed. "That wasn't the reason." He got up and stretched. "I'll be heading out now, if you point me in the direction of the city."

Malachi sighed with unhappiness at the idea. "One by one we'll all go in and get stuck."

"You have no faith," the demon said. "What happened to make you all so certain?"

"The turning of the lock," Viridia replied. "When Jack was imprisoned here, and all below shut fast. Above things may change by and by, but nothing moves here. How could it?"

Madrigal abruptly stood up and kicked over the fire, scattering its embers and ashes, causing the others who hadn't stood up yet to leap backwards and tumble over in the snow. "He wasn't always mad, but winter is the worst time. You can't go alone. I'll come along. Cat, come with us. Nixas, you too. You horses head back to my westerly house, it's along the lakeshores, on the other side from the city. If we can get out we'll meet there. If there's trouble at least you can have the lake."

"Trouble!" Teazle said dreamily. "Now you're talking."

Lila and Zal followed Moguskul as Jack ordered: they walked through the narrow streets, beneath the drunken overhangs of two-storey buildings and the icicle-bound edges of snow-laden roofs. They wound through little circles where houses faced each other around frozen fountains, the water caught in midsplash so that the droplets hung in the air. The meaning of this was clear; time had frozen in this winter, not only the weather and the land. Nobody was about, though they heard many voices and saw movement in the warm yellowed windows of the homes and stores, and their path was mapped by footprints of all kinds and sizes.

"Where is everyone?" Lila dared, watching her breath frost in the bitter air.

"This close to midwinter it's curfew come sunset," Moguskul said. His voice was gravelly and resonant, full of emotion which, after some replays, Lila decided was anger. "All are indoors awaiting the dawn. The streets aren't safe."

"Why?"

But she got no answer. Inside her chest, Tath was coiled like a spring. Between the two of them Lila could feel the answer, distinct and clear-the streets were hunted by night. She shared a look with Zal and saw him thinking the same thing. They didn't need to ask to know who the hunter was and it made her shiver involuntarily. To give some relief, and to find a way to voice her conclusion, she said, "But aren't these Jack's people?"

"They're their own people," Moguskul said, treading on with the same stolid movement that had kept them going for the last half hour. "They bide in Jack's city. That's all. Safer here." His last two words carried as much weight as any lengthy statement. They said, with their tone and timbre, that every faery in this part of the world had surrendered to Jack's power rather than challenge it. In their hearts they felt rebellious and resentful, but they weren't prepared to take a stand. Now that they were within the enemy, their chances of revolt had diminished. Moguskul's few words stood in a stark testament to that, she felt. He would not speak directly. Jack was listening, he implied, always and everywhere.

The chocolate box appearance of the faery town only grew as they neared its centre. Buildings became grander, taller, and more ethereal, with spires and delicate icework where a human hand would have set iron as rails or decoration or bars. Snow covered everything like a thick blanket, so heavy that even one more snowfall looked as though it would be enough to flatten everything. The whole world bent under its weight into soft angles and mysterious curves where drifts had caught in the eddies and built new geometries in the alleys and at the turns of the street. Sound was dampened to almost nothing. Golden squares and lozenges lit their way, from the windows which she tried to look through, but saw only the light shining, nothing else. Meantime the cold itself was continuously growing as the night deepened, and it bit hard. Its teeth sparkled on every surface, bright frost. Lila was thinking how pretty it was when she caught sight of something on those brittle surfaces and stopped to look.

At first she thought it was just some reflected colour but as she got closer, and then used her lenses to zoom in, she saw that every flat crystal of frost had an image trapped on it, like photographs reduced and set on microfilm. She bent down to the drift by her knee to see more clearly. Every crystal was different. The images weren't still however, they moved. She saw tiny figures and skeins of light which at first she didn't understand. They went through routines.

A fat-bellied man with a beard and pointed hat capered. A child ran laughing, looking back over his shoulder, along the street. A vortex of lights coalesced into the face of a grinning, wicked satyr, then fell apart.

They repeated endlessly.

"Let's go," Moguskul grated beside her. He made to grab her shoulder but Zal struck his hand aside.

"What's this?" she said.

"Nothing for you to mind," he said. "We'll be late. Follow me."

She glanced back and found the satyr staring at her. Not falling apart. Staring. It made a sound, or its lips moved, and in the crystal beside it the fat-bellied faery stood still and looked at her. A hand grabbed her T-shirt collar, pulled. She heard a fight start behind her as she stared, utterly absorbed by the sight before she was thrown into a drift and lost the vision.

They had spoken in unison, their lips moving though they made no sound at all.

Help us.

A heavy body fell against her; deadweight stinking of wet fur. She stumbled and powered up sharply, knocking Moguskul aside as he was struggling to right himself. He was nimble and turned his stagger into a sidestep, coming around ready to attack. She saw Zal poised a few metres away. Moguskul hissed and shook the heaviness of elfinduced sleep off him like an animal. "You're no human," he said to her, with a mixture of resentment and curiosity. "But you smell like one, and you look like one. No demon either," he turned to Zal and curled his lip, doglike, "But you smell like one and you fight like one even though you use the elf trick-smothering bastard."

"Sweet dreams," Zal said unpleasantly, though he was quite relaxed now and glanced at Lila to check that she was all right.

"Save your breath, sonny," the huge hunter replied, making a show of adjusting his clothing as he swiftly checked his weapons. "You'll need that later."

"There are people inside the ice," Lila said. "I was only asking why."

"There are lots of things around abouts," Moguskul replied. He set his jaw and turned. "None of them your business. Follow."

"No," Zal said.

"You must come with me to the castle," the hunter said, halting but not turning. "If you do not, I will make you." He was resigned to it.

"Why?" Lila said, getting ready for combat.

"Jack wishes to meet you in person," was the reply, given on a plume of hot breath.

"We heard him say so," Zal agreed. "But that doesn't mean we want to meet him. We have business elsewhere. You are delaying us. Time is short."

"He'll return you to your moment," Moguskul said into the air in front of him. He was relaxed and unmoving, except for his speaking. Around them the still town sparkled with reflected light.

"Just moving on will be enough," Zal said in an almost amiable tone that suggested all unpleasantness could be put aside, even laughed off. He was giving a chance but from the sharp spike in his energy level that made him seem suddenly almost electric with potential, Lila knew he was expecting a violent refusal.

"Don't force me to fight you," the hunting faery said. His shoulders were low. He looked like a whipped dog.

"Your choice," Zal said lightly.

"Yours," the fey replied, quiet now, the word almost silent, it was so dampened by the surroundings.

Nothing moved. Lila felt dizzy, longing for anything to undo the moment that hung over them all and make it fall one way or another. There was almost a sense of presence in the silence, as if every mote of snow and fragment of building were listening and holding them fast, enjoying their indecision and the suspension of all their intent.

This is Jack, she thought. All of this, and the freezing, and the stasis, it's all him.

She looked at Zal. "We're inside him," she said.

"That don't mean shit to me," Zal said, his voice melodic with demon tones. He was almost completely transparent, a dark kind of ghost against the brilliance of the frost, his face stretched into the longer and more alien lines of the true Shadowkin, eyes black pits. Compared to the others he made almost no breath at all. "He already met us, he just doesn't want to show himself so we have to walk his way. I don't care how big he is or what he wants. I'm not going any further under his command. This is good enough."

"To meet in a place of warmth and safety is what he ordered," Moguskul said, struggling with the words as it clearly pained him to maintain diplomacy when his hands were twitchy with anger.

"I am warm enough and I was safe before he overtook me," Zal said. "This'll do."

Lila's T-shirt crackled as she moved, melting where it touched her, freezing as soon as it moved away from her. She felt obliquely angry herself, that Zal hadn't asked her before taking his hard line-she'd imagined a trip more akin to an international meeting, with civilised question and answers, nobody wanting to move for a struggle-but now that he'd committed to the first move she could only follow through. "Let Jack speak for himself," she said to Moguskul, standing her ground in the snow.

A light patter of tiny snowflakes began to fall, silently. She inspected them on high resolution and saw the images trapped there. She got the impression that they were old, somehow, of the past; the colours in them were faded as if they'd been in the sun too long.

"You don't understand," growled Moguskul, his hand on the haft of the axe at his belt. "Within the palace is the only place you will see Jack."

"He spoke to us in the city," Zal said.

"That was only his voice."

"Can you give us a minute?" Lila broke in, feeling the weight of the exchange growing more deadly by the second.

Seeing it as his only likely chance to persevere, Moguskul nodded and stomped off a few metres further on out of earshot, probably.

Lila moved in close to Zal and whispered, "What are you doing?"

"I'm keeping us out of his place of power," Zal said. "I've never seen for myself but I've heard of faeries like this. Gulfoyle and Jack are both ancient great ones. They're not just people, sometimes they're not even people, they're the land and the sky and a place, a time. Further in the deep past they don't even have selves or voices ... they're akin to primal forces, with only the beginnings of awareness. I've heard of Jack too. Gulfoyle called him Giantkiller. He's the Green King, the Winter Death, you know," he lowered his voice even further and touched her ear with his andalune body so that he barely had to speak. "The Fisher King, whose impotence lays waste to all it contacts. At midwinter some quester, the grail quester, comes to ask him a question. If it is the right question rightly said, then either Jack is healed or else he will die and another comes to take his place in a new land. Quick, quick, look it all up, I haven't time to tell you but the human stories about him will do."