The White Wolf's Son (32 page)

After a few minutes in flight the ornithopter banked suddenly, its wings laboring, and I caught the flash of something that
could only be the sea, and a wide silver arc which might have been a bridge. I think it was dawn. As the light increased,
my eyes hurt even more. Whatever they had gassed us with was powerful stuff.

I think the altitude had something to do with my dizziness, because I soon passed out again, still feeling sick and still
determined to vomit, if I could, on Herr Klosterheim.

If this was his last chance to gain whatever it was he wanted, he deserved it, given the cleverness of his deceptions. But
needless to say, his success didn’t bode at all well for me.

The journey had already taken more than a day, I guessed. I woke and passed out again intermittently. I did have the momentary
satisfaction finally of throwing up over someone’s boots, and by their dull, cracked blackness I have a fairly good idea they
belonged to Herr Klosterheim. Of course, given his history, it couldn’t be the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

The last time I woke up, someone or something was lifting me out of the narrow space behind the pilots’ seats. I felt fresh
air slap me in the face. I opened my eyes,
shaking my head as if I’d surfaced in water. It was dark again but a substantially different kind of darkness. I felt it all
around me, populated, unquiet and encroaching. I glimpsed slimy greens and browns, ocher and murky blue, shadows which revealed
cruel, mad eyes full of suppressed glee. I had a strong impression of flames billowing black-grey smoke. Suddenly there was
a gushing roar, and I was blinded by a light again, though this was a vivid red and yellow flame, almost healthy in comparison
to the other.

I heard more oddly accented voices. Klosterheim replied in the same dialect. Grunts, snuffles, barks and growls sounded as
if we were in some sort of menagerie. I realized the animal noises came from various masked people who surrounded me, looking
down at me. A hand stroked my body, and I shuddered.

A brazen-headed wolf spoke. A familiar voice. “She must not be harmed.”

That, at least, was reassuring.

“Until the time is ready,” the same wolf added. “She must stay a virgin or she’s no use to us at all. The Stone is ours. Our
friend has brought us the cups as a sign of his good faith. She’ll bring us the Sword, and the boy will bring us the Staff.
But only if we are careful to follow every aspect of the ritual. Blood for blood, cup for cup. The law of like to like …”

“Bah! That’s mere superstition. Her only use is as bait for the albino and his pack.” A high-pitched, unfamiliar yap. They
spoke a form of English which was becoming easier to understand.

“They won’t take the bait.” That was Gaynor von Minct. I knew his voice well. “They’ll have guessed what we’re up to.” Cynical,
brutal, bleak, its tone mocked his
companions. “No, there has to be more to the child’s power.”

“Let us first discover if the worm attracts the fish.” Another voice I didn’t recognize at all, like the sharp hiss of dry
leaves. “If it does not, we shall investigate the nature of the worm.”

“Do as you will.” The voice came closer. I opened my eyes and looked into the face of a huge cobra, its stylized mouth open
as if to strike, its fangs at least a foot long, its crystalline eyes winking and sparking in the darkness, its metallic scales
flashing bright green and red. “Awake, is it, little worm?” This last to me.

“Bugger off,” I shouted. It was the strongest swearword I knew at the time. “You can’t hurt me—”

“Oh, but we can, little worm.” The cobra drew back, threatening to strike me. “We can. It is only our restraint that saves
you sweet, exquisite pain. For you have come to the capital of the world’s pain, the land of perpetual torment, where your
kind is privileged to know the very rarest of agonies. We possess a special vocation for turning pain into pleasure and pleasure
into pain. And we shall turn your courage into the most abject cowardice, believe me.”

He was trying to frighten me, I think, but there wasn’t any real need. I was already so terrified, a false calm had settled
over me. It made me appear braver than I was, because I laughed, and the cobra reared back again, raising a green-gauntleted
hand, then letting it drop to his side.

“We must not hurt her,” Klosterheim said urgently, “not yet. Not yet.”

“There’s no entertainment in frightening children.” A woman’s voice. I looked for the speaker. A bird in steel,
gold and rare gems; a stylized heron. “Your triumph is unseemly, gentlemen.”

“My lady,” returned the cobra, “we are, of course, your servants in this matter. She shall be placed in your charge, as Baron
Meliadus has ordered. However, if she fails to bring us our prey, you understand that she will become our property …”

“Naturally. I assure you I have more slaves of her age and sex than I can afford. The war effort has forced us all to make
sacrifices.”

“Sacrifices,” repeated the cobra. I expected to see a forked tongue come flicking out of that gaping mouth. He savored the
word.

“These days, dear Baron Bous-Junge, it is our duty to make as many as possible,” said the woman. She sounded quite young.
Her voice had a cool, mocking edge to it. I think I was more afraid of her than of the others.

They were all wary of her, I could tell. I guessed she was more powerful than the rest of them. I was probably in Granbretan,
but of course in those days I knew nothing of their social structure. I had heard that King Huon was hideous and that Baron
Meliadus, his chancellor, was ambitiously cruel. Baron Bous-Junge was some sort of court alchemist. Details of their lives
were sparse on the Continent. Few of our kind who crossed the Silver Bridge from Karlye to the city they called Deau Vere
ever came back to speak of what they had seen.

Intellectually I knew all this, of course, and I seemed to have reached a point where I couldn’t feel any more fear, although
there was plenty to be afraid of.

I began to see more details in the gloom. The room had a low, domed roof and smelled of something rotten around its edges.
In a brazier suspended from the ceiling
by brass chains, incense burned with a faint glow. Judging by the waft of musky air, it had only recently been lit. Outlines
of armored, beast-masked figures moved around the walls and congregated near the door. The swirl of colors came from the walls,
which were made of glass. As I got more used to them I realized we were inside an aquarium. What I was seeing through the
glass was liquid and the shadows of water creatures. I thought I glimpsed a mermaid, or something that might have been a shark
with arms. I guessed they were genetic experiments or maybe clones gone wrong. What I hadn’t realized was that this was also
to be my prison cell!

Von Minct and the others began to talk among themselves. They dropped their voices so I couldn’t hear. I felt they were talking
in code. But why would they be doing that here, in their own capital city?

How many elaborate plots, I wondered, were being hatched in Londra? I had the sense that they relished scheming, in spite
of the risks! Some people are like that. I was pretty much the exact opposite. I liked everything straightforward and aboveboard,
but I suspected that I was going to have to learn a bit of cunning quickly if I had even the slightest chance of surviving.
I was probably on my own now, since I couldn’t see that Klosterheim and company would have left Oona, Lobkowitz, Lord Renyard
and the rest alive. Monsieur Zodiac had gone off on a wild-goose chase, and everyone else was simply too busy fighting their
own particular battles to have much time for me.

I was puzzled why I wasn’t grieving the loss of my friends. In the past I had been upset by a lot less. I suspect when your
own life is at stake, you’re inclined to defer emotional outbursts until you can afford them.

I didn’t want to look too closely into the aquarium. I slept again, and when I woke up my eyes had adjusted so that I could
simply sit in the middle of that strange, domed room and look at the water swirling and churning with what appeared to be
a merman, with a great fishy tail where his feet should be. He put his odd, grey-green face to the glass and peered at me
blankly without attempting any kind of communication. When I rose and walked towards him, he darted off. Something with huge
teeth and brilliant eyes replaced him in a flash, and I recoiled. I decided to stay in the center of the room and watch. I
sat on the floor, although there were plenty of chairs. The chairs were carved with even more grotesque creatures than I saw
in the aquarium. I actually felt slightly more secure on the floor. I also had a feeling that it wasn’t only the merman watching
me, though what those people thought they could learn from me, I wasn’t altogether sure!

Hungry, I wondered if they planned to starve me until I was too weak to run. That way they wouldn’t have to worry about me
escaping. Not that I knew where to go if I
did
escape!

Almost as soon as I’d thought of food something moved, and a young woman in a red woolen one-piece suit, a blank mask hiding
her face, her head closely shaved and embedded with what looked like precious jewels, appeared behind me with a tray in her
hands. She had passed straight through the aquarium walls to reach me. There must be a door there, but I couldn’t see one.

“This is certainly the best prison I’ve ever been in,” I told her as she set the tray down on a small table beside one of
the chairs. Of course, I’d never been in any prison before that. “What’s your name? I’d like to be able to thank everyone
personally when I write my memoirs.”

That sounds ridiculous to me now, but I distinctly remember saying it. Bravado? Sheer terror, probably. “Why don’t you take
off your mask and have supper with me? Or maybe it’s breakfast …”

I made myself stop talking. I was on the verge of hysteria. The girl bowed. The wall began to move; one section of the aquarium
slid past another. She bowed again as she stepped through. Another shimmy of watery light, and she was gone.

The food was delicious, and I don’t think it was just because I was hungry. But I probably would have eaten it no matter what
it was. Only afterwards did it occur to me that it might be poisoned. Sure enough, as soon as I put down my spoon, having
cleaned a plate of what I assumed was a sweet dessert, I felt sleepy again.

The next time I woke up I was no longer in the aquarium room. A white light, bright enough to blind me, hit me full in the
eyes. I couldn’t easily see outside the circle of light as my eyes tried to adjust, but it was clear I was being observed
again. I had the impression of more shadowy beast masks and a murmur of conversation. I got to my feet and found I was dressed
in a filmy silk frock. I had on fresh underwear and was wearing thick tights. Everything was a shade of soft green. Someone
had obviously cleaned me up while I was knocked out, because even my hair had been washed. Then a big man walked into the
circle of light and hauled me up bodily before I could object.

The substance in the food also served to calm me. Either that, or I was in total denial about the fate of my friends and the
fact that I was unlikely ever to see my mum and dad again.

The man carrying me was dressed in armor. It was like
being lifted by one of the robots out of
Star Wars.
My clothes weren’t heavy enough to give me much warmth, and I shivered against his metal-covered body. I was carried down
a short corridor and then out into a street, where a tall wheeled machine, hissing and puffing out steam, waited for us. Shaped
like an animal and about the size of a double-decker bus, it had a single huge wheel in the front and several small ones at
sides and back. In what I assumed was a driving seat, on the top and at the rear of the thing, sat a figure whose armor and
livery were identical in design and materials to the carriage. His head was enclosed in a snarling horse’s head with sharp-filed
teeth like a dinosaur’s. He could just see over a tower in the roof made of copper and brass and glass. It looked like a mobile
observatory with a telescope to me!

The driver signed to the man who held me. A door opened in the windowless side of the vehicle, and I was put in rather gently
before the door was closed and locked.

A dim light was produced by gas jets. I could hear it hissing faintly. I was in a compartment with seats arranged around the
sides. In the center of the floor was a circle of light in which I could see a busy street, people riding horses, and even
what looked like a kind of huge motorbike. These were dwarfed, however, by buildings erected in the shape of ugly, squatting
humanoid figures with beast heads. They reminded me of something I’d seen in
The Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Watching the scene immediately outside, I found that by moving a wheel near the big circle of light, I could see everything
around me for some distance. It was a mobile camera obscura. I had come across something like it in Oxford, when I visited
my uncle Dave, also in Bath,
where one of my mum’s sisters lived. But they had been fixed versions. Like many of the Dark Empire’s inventions, it was a
very awkward way of achieving the privacy they seemed to crave, but science had obviously developed very differently since
that period they called “the Tragic Millennium.” Their economics had to be radically different, for a start; but I suppose
when you are bent on looting everyone else’s goods and land, you don’t have to worry too much about efficient costings.

As we moved, I turned the wheel, trying to get as good a picture of the city as I could. I was sure it was London—what they
called Londra—though there wasn’t a single familiar building or street. A busy, baroque city, with everything anthropomorphized.
Slaves, naked but for masks, hurried on errands. Shops displayed their wares, most of them pretty ornate and many of them
impossible to identify. Groups of warriors marched together along narrow thoroughfares over which those same grotesque buildings
loomed. The bus was soundproofed, so I could hear the street noises only faintly.