The Faerie Lord (27 page)

The singing stopped. For Henry it was as if the entire tribe held its collective breath. The four men fanned out, taking their poles with them. To his surprise they had managed to construct a frame table and the ark now stood at chest height on top of it.

Another pause, then a scrambling movement to his right as the tribespeople parted to allow a woman through. Unlike the others, there was no paint on her body. Instead she wore a shimmering golden robe that dropped from shoulder to ankle and might actually have been cut from silk. The effect was astounding – she was the first of the Luchti Henry had yet seen who wore anything at all – and hugely enhanced by the silver mask that hid her face. She walked, head high, towards the ark.

Beside Henry, a man murmured, ‘Euphrosyne …’ He pronounced the name the way a Greek might:
You-fross-sin-ee.
At once his neighbour echoed the word; then it was taken up into a quiet chant: ‘Euphrosyne … Euphrosyne … Euphrosyne …’

As the woman walked to the ark, the pole-carriers moved to escort her like proud bodyguards or priests.

She reached the frame table and fell on her knees, arms stretched upwards in a gesture of supplication. ‘Charaxes!’ she called. ‘Charaxes!’ She had a light, clear voice. For some reason Henry recalled Lorquin telling him this Euphrosyne was only twenty years old.

The crowd took up the call. ‘Charaxes! Charaxes! Charaxes!’

The ark began to glow.

Henry blinked. A reaction from the ark was the last thing he expected. This was obviously a religious moment for the Luchti, but Henry, who was Church of England, had never come across glowing arks before. The cynical thought passed through his mind that it might be something engineered by Euphrosyne or her priests. Then he remembered these were the Luchti, who roamed the desert naked. They hardly had the technology for glowing arks.

Heedless of the glow, Euphrosyne leaned her head against the side of the ark as if listening. ‘Charaxes speaks to her,’ murmured the man beside Henry. There was a matter-of-fact tone to his voice as if this was more or less routine for the occasion. But then the masked woman stood up and slowly turned her head as if searching the faces of the crowd and at once there was a murmur of surprise.

The movement stopped. It was difficult to be certain with the mask, but Euphrosyne seemed to be looking at someone close by Henry. She began to walk across the plaza. In a moment of growing nervousness, Henry thought perhaps she might be walking towards
him.

He swallowed. She was standing directly in front of him. ‘Charaxes wants to speak to you,’ she said.

The walk across the plaza was the longest Henry could remember taking in his entire life. He could feel every eye upon him. He could sense the tension in the tribe. The very fibres of his being told him this was bad news. What was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to talk to a god?

God used to speak to people fairly often, according to the Bible, but Henry was painfully aware the only ones who heard him nowadays were lunatics. But even that wasn’t relevant in this situation. Charaxes wasn’t the God you prayed to every Sunday, then ignored for the rest of the week like any other sane Anglican. Charaxes was the god of the Luchti and they believed in him implicitly. Charaxes led them out of bondage. Charaxes guided them to this hidden city. Heaven alone knew what other things he’d done that Henry hadn’t heard about. How were the Luchti going to take it when they found out Henry couldn’t hear him? Unless …

An earlier suspicion resurfaced. Maybe Euphrosyne and her helpers faked it. Henry seemed to remember reading somewhere that priests in Ancient Greece – or was it Ancient Egypt? – had secret speaking tubes built into statues of their gods. When the faithful came to worship, the Head Priest spoke down the tube and the congregation thought the god was talking. Speaking tubes were probably a bit sophisticated for the Luchti, but maybe Euphrosyne was a ventriloquist.

Henry decided that if the ark did talk to him, he’d play along. What did it matter if Euphrosyne was fooling her people? It probably brought a bit of comfort into their harsh lives. And if the ark didn’t talk, maybe he could pretend it did. Maybe he could claim it gave him a secret message. Something nice to cheer up the tribe. You’re God’s favourites so he’s looking out for you, sort of thing. It was kind of dishonest, but now he’d thought of it, it was probably the least he could do. They’d taken him in as one of their own and Lorquin had saved his life. He owed the Luchti big-time.

Euphrosyne reached the ark and stopped so abruptly Henry almost walked into her bottom. (Was there a penalty for walking into the bottom of a priestess of Charaxes?) Close up he noticed that the ark inlays really were precious – silver and gold, without a doubt. He’d seen no sign at all that the Luchti worked metal, but the ark looked so ancient it might well have been made by an early civilisation, possibly even the one that built the city.

Euphrosyne undid a catch, opened the lid, then stepped back a pace. Henry could see a short metallic rod protruding from the ark. She turned back towards him and, to his complete surprise, removed her silver mask. Underneath, she had a pleasant face – not particularly pretty, but fresh and cheerful. She smiled broadly at him. ‘Charaxes speaks now,’ she said conversationally.

Without the mask she looked so much less daunting that Henry immediately forgot his earlier plans. ‘What do I do?’ he asked. It suddenly occurred to him she might be a medium who’d go into trance and speak for the god. If so, that would make things easier.

‘Walk to the ark and say, “I am here,”’ Euphrosyne told him. ‘Charaxes cannot see, but he will hear you.’

For some reason it never occurred to Henry to do anything other than what he was told. He took three steps forward, licked his lips and said softly, ‘I am here.’

‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ Charaxes demanded clearly from the ark. Henry took a step back, his blood chill, his heart thumping. That wasn’t the voice of a god.

It was the voice of Mr Fogarty.

There was an emergency team waiting as Madame Car-dui and Nymph stepped out of the Palace portal. Two of its members moved into the flames at once and re-emerged seconds later carrying the prostrate Pyrgus on a stretcher. ‘Place him in stasis immediately,’ Madame Cardui ordered.

‘One moment,’ said Chief Wizard Surgeon Healer Danaus pompously. He was dressed, as always, in the formal robes of his profession. The stretcher-bearers stopped.

‘What is it?’ Madame Cardui snapped. She disliked Danaus. He was one of the old guard at the Palace, hugely experienced and very good indeed at his job. But he was officious and arrogant and had a grossly inflated idea of his own importance.

‘The placement of a living Prince of the Realm in stasis requires an executive order from the ruling sovereign,’ Danaus said.

Madame Cardui glared at him. ‘The ruling sovereign isn’t here.’

‘Precisely.’

The body on the stretcher was no longer that of a young man, not even the maturing adult who had sought refuge in the Analogue World. Pyrgus looked positively shrunken now, wrinkled and old, as if the illness that had seized him was accelerating.

‘This is an emergency,’ said Madame Cardui.

Chief Wizard Healer Danaus favoured her with a patronising smile. ‘I’m afraid there is no provision in the legislation for emergencies.’ He adjusted his robes. ‘Perhaps -‘ He stopped abruptly, eyes wide.

Nymph was by his side now, her dagger pressed into his throat. ‘I am the wife of Prince Pyrgus,’ she said icily. ‘Perhaps it would be sufficient if I signed the executive order?’

Danaus swallowed visibly. ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice scarcely more than a squeak. ‘Perhaps it would.’

Stasis magic was normally used for preserving corpses, so Pyrgus was taken directly to the mortuary. Madame Cardui shivered, and not simply because of the cold. She had no personal fear of death – strange how it faded as one grew older – and she accepted its inevitability among the old. But Pyrgus, for all his elderly appearance, was not old. Although he would never have thanked her for saying so, he had been scarcely more than a boy when the time fever struck. To see him now, wizened, shrunken, clearly close to death, was an abomination.

Although her dagger had disappeared now, Nymph stood close to Chief Wizard Healer Danaus. But he seemed to need no further encouragement and his team worked with silent efficiency. Nonetheless, Nymph watched each move closely. Pyrgus had already been left in his coma too long. She was not prepared to take the slightest chance of any further delay.

There was an exclusion cabinet already set up, looking for all the world like a transparent coffin. But it had to be prepared and activated before it was any use to Pyrgus. A nurse began to apply the spell coatings using a broad brush. While she worked with cool efficiency, Nymph felt a rising tide of frustration. She was far more angry with Danaus than she cared to show. The man had been warned of Pyrgus’s condition. He should have had everything ready instead of cavilling about legal niceties.

The coatings were tricky since different spells were required on different surfaces, but they were finished eventually.

‘Why aren’t they putting him inside?’ Nymph demanded, as the nurse was replaced by a different member of the team.

‘We require the catalyst,’ Danaus said, watching her warily. He risked adding, ‘This is difficult work.’

It probably was. Nymph noted it was being carried out by a Faerie of the Night. There were more Nighters working in the Palace since Blue became Queen. It was official policy now, but Nymph still felt vaguely uneasy. She watched as the man laid an adhesive strip along the bottom of the cabinet. He attached a small jewel to one end and what looked like a metallic fuse to the other. Nothing he did seemed particularly difficult to Nymph, but she supposed there was not much tolerance in the placements. Certainly the Nighter seemed to work with as much caution as speed. He glanced at Danaus and nodded as he finished.

Danaus nodded back. ‘Trigger,’ he said quietly.

The Nighter clicked his fingers and a small spark jumped from his thumb to the end of the fuse. There was a spluttering sound and a sudden smell of burning as the fuse ignited. The adhesive tape vanished in a silent flash and the tiny jewel began to pulse and glow. Seconds later it too exploded silently in a burst of greenish light.

Danaus walked over to inspect the cabinet. He sniffed several of its surfaces and bent over to examine the interior closely. After long moments he straightened up. ‘Put His Highness inside,’ he said.

Nymph said quickly, ‘Chief Wizard Healer, is it true there is a risk with this procedure?’

Danaus glanced at her without affection. ‘Yes. Stasis is normally used to preserve dead bodies or inanimate objects. There is a negligible risk when it is applied to living systems.’

‘Negligible?’

‘Statistically measurable, but small.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘Certainly your husband would be in far greater peril if we did not place him in stasis now. Were I smitten with the fever, it is what I would want for myself. The process of the disease must be stopped until we can find a cure.’

‘Good,’ Nymph said. ‘Proceed.’ She made a silent decision to kill Chief Wizard Surgeon Healer Danaus if any harm befell Pyrgus.

If he sensed her thought, Danaus didn’t show it. He nodded to his team and seconds later Pyrgus was sealed inside the cabinet. He looked disturbingly like a corpse now, although Nymph could see the gentle rise and fall of his breathing. But even that would stop when the cabinet was activated. Everything would stop. Pyrgus, who was being eaten by Time, would halt in Time.

Danaus took a tiny six-inch wand from a pocket of his robe and snapped it over the cabinet at the level of Pyrgus’s throat. The ark hummed for a brief second,

then was silent. Pyrgus’s breathing stopped. ‘It’s done,’ Danaus said.

Perhaps it was the sheer
stillness
of Pyrgus that Nymph found upsetting. His face began to blur, as if tears were clouding her eyes, yet strangely she did not cry – she never cried. There was a knot of nausea in her stomach that almost certainly came from worry. She turned away and felt herself sway.

‘Nymph deeah?’ Madame Cardui said.

There were too many people in the room. They appeared and disappeared and busied themselves in hordes that ebbed and swelled like some strange tide. There was something wrong with the light, for it flickered incessantly.

‘Nymph?’ Madame Cardui said again.

She needed to get back to the fresh air, away from the death smells. They would take Pyrgus away, now they had placed him in stasis. They would carry the cabinet to his Palace quarters and post guards to ensure he was not disturbed. They would continue their search for a cure. There was nothing more she could do here.

‘Nymph, what’s the matter?’ Madame Cardui asked in sudden alarm.

Nymph took a step forward and the world spun around her.

‘Nymph!’ It was close to a shout now.

Then came the plummy voice of Chief Wizard Healer Danaus, confident and firm. ‘Stand back, Madame Cardui,’ he said. ‘She has temporal fever.’

Blue came to a decision. ‘I’m going in,’ she said.

It occurred to her that she’d been caught up in a myth. She’d cast herself (or perhaps the Purlisa had subtly cast her) as a heroic figure off to slay the monster. Or else, she realised, as a tragic figure about to be captured by the monster. Until now, she’d never thought of looking beyond the two great mythic roles: conquering hero or captive princess. But the fact was she didn’t have to accept either of these roles. There was a third way. She could creep into the cavern, avoid the serpent if there really was a serpent and find out whether Henry was inside. If he wasn’t, she could then creep out again. If he was, she’d try to figure out a way to rescue him, preferably one that
didn’t
involve her slaying a great monster.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said the charno.