The Queen of Sinister (15 page)

'I want to prove my worth. I still feel like a hanger-on. Professor Crowther ...'

'Ignore him. He's grumpy about everything. Whatever he says, I bet he's secretly glad you're along for the ride.'

Matt shifted uncomfortably, then said, 'There's no easy way to put this, but ... are you feeling OK?'

'You mean the voices? I don't want—' Shards of glass were suddenly being driven into her brain. Her hands shot to cover her eyes.

'I'm sorry .. .'

But his question had released some of the pressure and words came out unbidden. 'There are four of them, apart from me, all sitting in an Ice-Field, looking out into the night.' She approached the image hesitantly, like a sleeping jungle beast.

'You're aware of them?'

'All the time.'

'How does that feel?' He looked uncomfortable at his probing, but couldn't help his curiosity.

'Like they're all me, but not me. I know that doesn't make any sense, but I can't describe it any other way. There's a pressure in my head, as if they're all jammed in, each one trying to force themselves forward. Me ... Caitlin ... I'm a little stronger, so most of the time I can stay at the front. But if one of the others became stronger ...' She really didn't want to consider that. 'In a strange way, they help.'

'How's that?'

'Most of the time they stop me thinking about Grant and Liam.' Two graves, a stormy night; her mind shifted with a tempest-driven lurch. 'Even mentioning their names, I know ... I could go mad if I allowed myself to think about it.' She laughed bitterly. 'Mad! Madder ... maddest ... My sanity is hanging on a cliff edge by its fingertips, and the slightest thing could send it plunging into some big black hole, never to return. The others ... it feels as if they're keeping all my thoughts and feelings chained up, keeping me steady. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be here.' She chewed her lip until it hurt. 'I'd probably be dead.'

'Don't say that.'

She was surprised by the concern in his voice. 'I can't help it. Sometimes I wonder what's the point in going on. It's just misery all around us and misery waiting for us in the future. Sometimes I try to fool myself with optimism, hope, but the truth is always there, casting a shadow over anything. I wish I could feel pure again. I wish I could feel happy.'

She had the impression that Matt wanted to put his arm around her shoulder to comfort her, but he restrained himself, and while a part of her was glad he did, another just wanted to feel some human comfort. 'How are you holding up?'

'You cope, don't you?' he said. 'There's nothing else to do. Everybody's been trying so hard to hold things together since the Fall. It made us a Third World country overnight. Yeah, we've been clawing our way back - the interim government in Oxford is doing a good job ...'

'Government? I never heard about that.'

'The news hasn't fanned out yet. You know what communication is like. I thought when Rosetta went, that was it. After Jan left, I was only really doing things for her - you know, getting through each day, making sure food was on the table, for what it was worth. But then I saw how everybody else was pulling together and I thought I was just being selfish for thinking about giving up. Now, more than ever, we need each other. I've got a part to play, however bad my personal situation.'

Whether he intended it or not, his words struck a chord with Caitlin. Their conversation dried up as she retreated deep into herself where the cold winds of the Ice-Field blew.

By the time they'd got through the fog, night swathed the countryside and a heavy rain dampened their spirits.

Mahalia increased her pace until she was beside Crowther and then gripped his arm forcefully. 'I'm cold and I'm wet and I'm tired and I'm hungry,' she said. 'Where's this city?'

'They don't really make maps of this place,' Crowther replied with irritation. 'Now shut up - you sound like a whining brat.'

'Are you sure we're up to dealing with the things we're going to meet in this place?' Matt asked. 'The White Walker was about the most bizarre thing I could imagine, but at least it was friendly. We may not be so lucky next time.'

'I don't think we really have a choice, do we?' Crowther replied curtly.

Carlton began to tug on the professor's sleeve. Crowther rounded on the boy, then caught himself when he saw Mahalia and Caitlin's glares. 'What is it?' the professor said in clipped tones.

Excitedly, Carlton pointed across the sweeping grassland into the dark rain-swept distance. Gradually the others picked out flickering lights that they had first taken to be twinkling stars.

'I don't want to go there.' The tiny, frightened voice of Amy chilled them all.

The fortress city rose up the side of one of the foothills into the dark, vast even in the part they could see illuminated by the light of the torches that blazed along the ramparts. A jumbled mass of towers and spires, domes, vaults, steeples and the pitched roofs of myriad smaller dwellings, all of them crammed so closely together that the city resembled some Third World sprawl, the layout so confused and organic that what lay beyond the light could have stretched on for ever.

The city walls at the front rose up two hundred feet or more, the lowest part of them constructed from gargantuan boulders, as if the city had grown naturally from the earth. An ebony gate six storeys high was set in front of a rough road that wound across the plain. On either side of it, roaring flames hissed in the rain.

If they hadn't known better, they would have said the city itself was alive, for it exuded an oppressive, brooding presence, and as they stood before those massive gates they couldn't escape the feeling that it was surveying them with a forensic eye to decide if they were worthy to enter.

For the first time, Crowther was so disturbed that they all thought he might turn back, but after a moment's hesitation he marched forwards, held up his fist for one cautious instant and then hammered on the gate. The pounding that rang out from his knock was distorted beyond all reason into a deafening alarum that made them cover their ears. Beyond the gates, the thunderous warning ran along winding streets into the heart of the city.

'At least they heard us,' Crowther said. The humour fell flat. Caitlin/Amy clutched on to Matt's arm and whimpered. Carlton, however, held his head high and walked forward to stand beside Crowther. He appeared more curious than anything.

They waited in unbearable anticipation as the echoes rang out, eyeing each other fitfully. After long moments, they heard the clunk of some locking mechanism, and then the gates slowly ground open. There was no one on the other side.

It took a while for them to pick out the detail of what lay beyond the shadows clustered under the arch of the gate; not because it was dark, for torches burned everywhere, but because their eyes appeared to mist over, or because their brains took an unusually long time to piece together an image from the information they were receiving.

Eventually they agreed that a cobbled street wound up the hillside into shadow amongst houses of varying styles - most prominently medieval and Tudor - clustering so hard against the road that they threatened to swallow it. The claustrophobia was palpable.

All five of them hesitated, unsure if they should enter, until figures emerged from the shadows. They were men, barely more than five feet tall, clad in leather and steel that was not quite armour but not quite clothes. They had long hair and beards, but their eyes were the most disturbing thing. Flat and cold, they showed no personality, nothing human at all. Crowther made a strange, nervous noise in his throat and stifled it with embarrassment. 'We are visitors from the Fixed Lands,' he began. He'd practised the words a hundred times in his head, as he had learned in the college, but they still sounded strange. 'Do you accept us freely and without obligation?'

The cold, unnerving stares of the guards did not waver, but after a few seconds a slightly taller guard stepped forward from the group. Crowther was pleased to see a little more life in his eyes. 'Is that a Sister of Dragons I see before me?' His gaze was fixed on Caitlin.

Crowther followed his stare, unsure how to respond. 'If you say so.'

The chief guard nodded thoughtfully and motioned for them to enter. Matt began to step forward, but Crowther held him back with an arm across his chest. 'Do you accept us freely and without obligation?' Crowther asked again.

The chief guard eyed him slyly. 'We do. Now follow me.'

Caitlin/Amy buried her face in Matt's shoulder as they walked into the city and the gates boomed shut behind them.

They were led through the steeply winding cobbled streets for nearly half an hour. Houses, inns and shops pressed oppressively on either side and leaned in over their heads so that only a thin sliver of sky was visible. Occasionally they would glimpse strange faces peering at them through bottle-glass windows that distorted the inner torchlight into starbursts. Sometimes they would hear whispered comments that they couldn't understand, but which disturbed them immensely.

Finally they rounded a corner into a small cobbled square with a mildewed fountain, no longer working. The water in the stagnant pool around it was stained with green slime. On the far side stood a threatening building that towered over the surrounding rooftops. It echoed the construction of the city itself, monolithic walls soaring up into the darkness, devoid of ornamentation, like a slab of granite.

The leader of the guards turned to them with a strange smile. 'We bid you welcome to the Court of Soul's Ease.'

Inside the enormous building - which they had decided was a palace or a city hall, though it contained none of the opulence one would have expected to find in either of those places - a chill exuded from the stone walls that penetrated deep into their bones. Impenetrable shadows lay all around and even the flickering torches that lighted their way did little to dispel them. The pervading atmosphere was one of waiting for a terrible event that could never be deflected.

The five travellers were led along interminable corridors, occasionally glimpsing vast vaulted halls through half-open doors where only the echoes of footsteps lived. But as they progressed deeper into the heart of the building, they saw more of the strange small people, flitting across their path carrying secretive bundles or gossiping conspiratorially in pairs, hidden in alcoves, hands raised to cover their mouths. They would watch the procession pass with intense speculation; Caitlin couldn't tell if they were fearful or threatening, or simply contemptuous. There was an overpowering sense of intelligence moving through the shadows, of plotting and waiting, of secret treaties and backroom murders.

'I don't think I've breathed since we crossed over,' Matt whispered, possibly to himself.

Caitlin came forward from the cold hiding place where she had been watching events through Amy's eyes, distanced and protected. 'We never dreamed,' she said. 'Or perhaps we did dream ... but we never believed.'

'I wonder how differently we would have lived our lives if we had realised all these things existed just behind the scenery,' Matt continued. The whites of his eyes occasionally gleamed from the shadowy pools of their orbits. He noticed Mahalia was walking so close to him that her shoulder occasionally brushed his arm. 'Don't be scared,' he said.

'I'm not scared.' She glared at him scornfully and then ostentatiously dropped two steps back, but Caitlin saw her right hand sneak under her jacket, ready.

'What are they?' Caitlin asked uneasily.

Crowther glanced back, his entire face lost in the gloom beneath the brim of his hat. 'They're the source of all our myths and legends - they're our gods.' He laughed bitterly. 'Fairies. Elves. All the old stories and the abiding tales, from the campfire to the library. Everything that bursts from the wellspring of imagination. Crossing over into our world, darting back before we could really be sure we'd seen anything. Sometimes staying for a little simple torment. Jung was right, though I venture he never imagined it quite this way.'

'It's hard to see them as gods,' Matt said.

'They didn't always look this way. They've been ... diminished,' Crowther replied.

Crowther's attention returned to the guards as they took a sharp left into a large room where the only light came from a blazing log fire in an enormous stone fireplace. As their eyes adjusted to the hellish glow, they saw shapes around the room, sitting in high-backed chairs talking in hushed tones, hunched over a map resting on a large oak table, more whispers, more plots, but in this room there was a feeling of sleeping power.

The chief guard stepped forward. 'My Lord,' he said into the half-light, 'here are Fragile Creatures, washed up at our door on this night. And a Sister of Dragons.'

The residents of the room stiffened as one. Goose- bumps ran up Caitlin's arms. What did that phrase mean?

Was it linked to the vision Mary had, when the world had been a different place? And why did it haunt her so?

'Come closer.' The voice was the source of the power they had sensed. It came from a chair near the fire, where a small man with long black hair and beard and pointed ears glanced up from the flames. His eyes gleamed red in the firelight, red and thoughtful.