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Authors: Herbie Brennan

Tags: #Adventure, #Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Young Adult, #Romance, #Magic, #Urban Fantasy

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BOOK: The Faerie Lord
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Not if they wanted to regain their former glory.

Chapter Five

The battlefield looked exactly the way it did the day the Civil War ended. Evidence of violence was everywhere. Spell-driven explosives had gouged vast craters out of solid rock. Grasslands were withered and burned. The few surviving trees stood barren and bare. There were mangled, bleeding bodies everywhere, most motionless, some mewling softly in their pain, a few still trying desperately to crawl away on limbless stumps.

The illusion was perfect. You could smell the blood and the unmistakable stench of military magic. Blue picked her way carefully through the debris, her face impassive. The memorial was here by her order. It was her penance.

Although she knew the bodies were phantoms, she only knew it with her head. Her gut clenched in pity and horror – the horror she herself had brought about. She talked to no one about it, not even Madame Cardui, but she knew beyond a doubt that had she made different decisions when she first became Queen, the brave soldiers immortalised in this gory spectacle would never have died. The Realm would never have rent itself in two. Faerie would not have fought faerie. The guilt of it drove her back. For one full day in every month, Blue forced herself to walk and look and smell and remember.

Her guards were two squat demons. The vicious little brutes scampered from rock to rock several yards away, but she knew from experience their stubby wings could carry them to her side within a second if danger threatened. She only ever came here accompanied by the demons. She claimed the choice was political: she was Queen of Hael now, after all. But the real reason was that she could not bring herself to parade her guilt in front of her regular faerie guard. Even penance had its limits.

One of the pseudo-corpses was an officer she knew by sight, a former Captain in the Palace Guard. He would have been a Major now, if things had been different, maybe even a Colonel. Instead he was dead, his real body buried in the military plot on Imperial Island. One small tragedy within the greater tragedy, yet it was this memory that forced a tear from Blue’s eye. She wondered, not for the first time, whether the Realm would have been a better place had she followed her brother’s example and refused the throne when it was offered her.

The thought of Pyrgus brought her attention back to the here and now and the crisis that might yet become a greater threat to the Realm even than the Civil War. Was there anything more she should be doing? She ran through the checklist in her head and decided there was not. What else could she do? What else could
anyone
do? Some things were beyond control, even for a Queen. But at least Pyrgus had a chance now, since she’d insisted he live in the Analogue World. He mightn’t like her decision, but he’d had to admit it made sense. And mercifully, events back here were moving slowly. While that continued, there was hope.

She wished Henry were with her.

Even now, so long after it happened, Blue felt herself flush at the memory. How stupid she’d been! Admittedly she was just a child then, scarcely more than fifteen, but even so she should have known better. Men never liked to feel pursued and boys were even worse. She’d been mad to ask Henry to marry her. Anyone with half a brain could have told her what he would do. In fact Madame Cynthia
had
told her what he would do, but Blue had typically ignored the advice. She sighed. Where was Henry now? Still at home in the Analogue World, of course, but did he have a steady girlfriend? Was there someone in his life who took his hand and smoothed back his hair and made him feel a little better about himself?

It was stupid, but she felt a rush of sadness that even overwhelmed her guilt about the Civil War.

The demons were by her side. Blue jerked away on reflex – she could never get used to the speed with which the creatures moved … or her basic revulsion to the breed. But they meant her no harm, of course. Their red eyes were staring outwards, their bodies in defensive posture. These were her subjects now, whether she liked it or not, and they would protect her without a single thought for their own lives.

Blue followed the direction of their gaze to find out what had triggered the alert. The gruesome battlefield stretched out dismally in all directions, but there was a figure silhouetted on a distant hillock, and the fact that it was upright meant it was no illusion. The demons were watching it intently, chittering softly to each other in those curious lobster-claw clicks they used in places where telepathy was blocked.

‘At ease,’ Blue said softly. It made little difference. Both her guardians were aquiver, watching the approaching figure like cats focused on a bird. She had a horror that one day they would disembowel an innocent, perhaps some poor subject who pressed forward to present a petition. So far it hadn’t happened: demonic discipline was extraordinary. But she still worried.

The figure was a messenger. She could tell by the curious loping gait as it approached. As it came closer, it resolved itself into a trance-runner, prominently identified by the insignia of his Guild. The man’s eyes were fixed on a point high in the sky, while his right hand clutched an ornate ceremonial dagger that he plunged up and down as if it were a staff. Somehow he managed to avoid all obstacles.

‘Stand down,’ Blue ordered firmly. The dagger, if nothing else, might have triggered an attack, but the demons would not move now unless she was directly threatened.

Although the runner could not possibly have seen her, he swerved to stop a few discreet yards away. Light alone knew how far he had come, but he was not even breathing heavily. His eyes gradually lowered and regained their spirit; then he sank to his knees. ‘Majesty,’ he said, extending his dagger, hilt first.

Blue took the weapon. The gesture was symbolic of the fact that the Guildsman meant her no harm, but it was more than that. Deftly she unscrewed the top of the dagger and shook a scrap of parchment out of the hollow hilt. There was a moment as the embedded security spells sensed her essence; then the parchment expanded into a standard Palace message scroll.

As Blue began to read, her eyes widened in sudden alarm.

Chapter Six

Since coffee had a psychedelic affect on faeries, Henry brewed them all a pot of tea. Nymph stared into her mug with suspicion, but Pyrgus had had it before and drank his in great draughts as he explained.

‘The Faeries of the Night organise their own health services and I’m afraid there still isn’t much communication between theirs and ours. Not that I think it would have made much difference. I can’t see why our people would have spotted anything amiss either. The very first case, the first one we know about anyway, was a kid called Jalindra and everybody thought she’d just caught the horse-sniffles. All Cretch kids get horse-sniffles sooner or later and the early symptoms are similar.’

Mr Fogarty, while he was still in residence, had amassed a peculiar assortment of mugs. The one Henry had given to Pyrgus featured a flock of poultry listening intently to one of their number who was singing. The title of the picture, running underneath the rim, was
The Bantam of the Opera.
He watched as Pyrgus set it to one side and went on seriously. ‘Jalindra was four years old when she caught the bug. A year later she was a middle-aged woman. Six months after that she was dead.’ He stared down at the table top and added, ‘From old age.’

‘We have that here,’ Henry said. ‘Premature aging. It’s called …’ He searched his memory for the name and surprised himself by finding it. ‘... Werner’s Syndrome. There was something about it on telly a couple of weeks ago. It’s a gene thing apparently. The youngsters never grow very much and they go grey and wrinkled while they’re still children and they get old people’s diseases like heart attacks and cataracts and they all die young.’ He set his own mug to one side. It had a fish motif below the words
Cod Moves in Mysterious Ways.

But Pyrgus was shaking his head. ‘Not the same thing. This one has been spreading through the population. Not just Faeries of the Night, either. Faeries of the Light as well.’

‘Like Pyrgus,’ Nymph put in.

Henry became aware of a tightening in the pit of his stomach, as if he’d suddenly begun to feel afraid. Which he had. He didn’t want Pyrgus to have some ghastly disease that reduced his lifespan to eighteen months. He glanced at his friend and realised suddenly he now looked far more like his father, the old Purple Emperor, than he did like the boy Henry had known. It was creepy as well as scary. Henry said hesitantly, ‘But you’re not ...? I mean, they’ve found a cure, haven’t they? You’re not, like -‘ he gave a sudden, very false laugh ‘- going to die or anything?’

‘No, he’s not,’ said Nymph firmly.

Henry looked at her. He didn’t like the fact she was the one who’d answered him. But before he could say anything else, Pyrgus was talking again. ‘Let me tell you the whole thing, Henry,’ he said easily. ‘It’s a bit tricky and I want you to understand.’

Understand what?
Henry thought. But he only said soberly, ‘Go on.’

Pyrgus said, ‘This isn’t a disease like anything we’ve ever seen in the Realm before. It isn’t in the medical records, and there’s nothing like it in our history. It started in the Cretch with poor Jalindra and moved outwards. It was a very slow spread at first. The healers thought it was a rare condition and didn’t pay much attention. Actually -‘ He stopped suddenly and licked his lips.

‘What?’ Henry asked.

A look of embarrassment crept over Pyrgus’s face. ‘To be honest, in the early days nearly everybody thought it was a Faerie of the Night disease – only Faeries of the Night could get it. Because that’s the way it looked.’ He shifted in his chair. ‘There’s still a lot of prejudice against Faeries of the Night. Blue’s doing all she can, but you can’t really make up laws about that. It all comes down to the way people
think.
And you can’t really blame them for being prejudiced against Faeries of the Night after all the stuff Hair streak did.’

‘No,’ Henry agreed. He was a bit prejudiced against Faeries of the Night himself.

‘Anyway,’ Pyrgus said on a whistling out-breath, ‘by the time we
did
start to take it seriously, by the time Faeries of the Light started to get sick, it had spread too widely for us to tackle the problem by isolation. So the healing wizards had to study it properly and what they found out was weird.’

‘Really
weird,’ Nymph said with emphasis.

Pyrgus leaned forward. ‘The thing is, Henry, this disease doesn’t just make you
look
old, or mess up your body so you go wrinkled and grey. The healers are calling it TF – temporal fever. It actually interferes with time. You start to live your life faster than you should.’

Henry blinked. ‘I don’t think I followed that.’

Pyrgus sat back in his chair again. ‘No, it’s not all

that easy. Look, imagine you caught it from me -‘ He noticed Henry’s expression and added quickly, ‘Which you can’t; I’ll explain why in a minute. But imagine you had it now. Every so often, you’d come down with bouts of fever. Then you’d sink into a coma. We’d put you to bed and wait for you to come out of it and if it lasted for more than a day or so, we’d watch you getting older. That’s what happens from the
outside.
But
inside
– what
you
experience – it’s completely different. You don’t know you’re lying in a bed at all. Once the coma starts, everything around you suddenly speeds up. You find yourself thinking and doing things at breakneck speed. If you’d planned to go away on holiday tomorrow, that’s what you’d do. And you’d race around doing holiday stuff, but instead of it all taking weeks, it would all be over in a few seconds. You see?’

‘Yes …’ Henry said uncertainly. ‘Actually, no.’

‘You start living your life very fast. Then after a while it stops and you’re jerked back to the present and you’re in bed recovering and you start living again at the normal rate. Except you’ve aged by whatever number of years you’ve already lived. The fever has burned up your future.’

After a moment, Henry said, ‘So you come back
remembering
the future? You know what’s going to happen to you?’

Pyrgus chewed his lip. ‘Yes and no. It’s all a bit of a blur – even while it’s going on. But the thing is, the future you remember is burned up. You won’t live it, because you already have. Are you following?’

Henry blinked and said nothing. After a moment Pyrgus said, ‘What can happen, if you’re lucky, is you might pick out a detail or two about other people’s futures or what’s going on generally. But only where it touches your own
personal
future and you’d be surprised how little that is. I mean a big war in the Realm could pass you right by if you didn’t happen to be in it. Most people don’t remember enough to be useful.’ An odd expression crossed his face. ‘Most people …’

They sat looking at each other. After another moment, Henry said, ‘And this is what you’re going through?’

‘Was,’ Pyrgus said.
‘Was
going through. The effect stops when you’re in the Analogue World. That’s why I said you couldn’t catch it from me. The disease goes dormant here. You don’t have the symptoms and you can’t pass it on.’

‘So that’s why the two of you are in my world?’ Henry said.

‘Yes,’ Nymph said. ‘Blue’s idea was that we wait it out until somebody finds a cure.’

Henry grinned. ‘And that’s why you came to see me?’

But Pyrgus didn’t grin back. He shook his head. ‘We came to see you because Mr Fogarty is dying.’

Chapter Seven

The fear was back and this time it was much worse than it had been when he was worried about Pyrgus. ‘He can’t be!’ Henry said. But he knew Mr Fogarty could very well be. He might look tough as old boots, but he had to be nearly ninety. The reality was a lot of old people fell off their perches long before that. Not that reality would stop Henry going into denial. ‘He can’t be,’ Henry repeated. ‘What about his treatments?’ Mr Fogarty was getting rejuvenation spells from Palace wizards in the Faerie Realm. They were supposed to rebuild the vital organs. At the time they started, Henry frankly hadn’t noticed much change in Mr Fogarty’s appearance, but Madame Cardui had once remarked the treatments made him ‘frisky’.

BOOK: The Faerie Lord
13.81Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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