The Faeman Quest fw-5 Read online

  And now, to his astonishment and consternation, the thunderbolt had struck him.

  Despite wearing what was clearly faerie clothing, the woman in the room was human – he could see that at a glance: she had unfashionably short hair, for one thing, without a hint of reddish highlight, and her eyes lacked any characteristic of either Faeries of the Night or Faeries of the Light. He could see too that she was genuinely Henry’s sister. The family resemblance was definite, if understated, and fortunately she lacked the weaker characteristics of his great-niece’s King Consort. There was determination in her jaw, steel in her gaze, a subtle cruelty about her lips. He could imagine her rending her partner after mating, as humans did. Or was that spiders? In any case, the thought excited him.

  Hairstreak swallowed and licked lips that had suddenly gone dry. He took a step forward, then stopped. She was staring at him in amazed adoration. The thunderbolt never strikes once! Oh, joy! Oh, bliss! Oh, frabjous day! With every ticking second she looked more beautiful, more glorious, more delicious than the last. She looked cunning and ruthless and brutal and strong – all the qualities he had always searched for in a woman, yet never seemed to find. For once the Gods were definitely with him. Had this incredible meeting occurred as little as a month ago, life would have been an unmitigated disaster. How could she have coped with his wheelbarrow and his cube? How could he have coped?

  A thought struck him. Was the passion he felt an aspect of the thunderbolt or a feature of his remarkable new body? Certainly his whole body seemed electrified now, far beyond even the elation he’d felt following the initial transplant. Did it matter which was the chicken and which the egg? On reflection, he didn’t think so.

  The woman took a step towards him. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, surpassing even the silk mistresses who were renowned throughout the Realm as examples of feminine perfection. Her eyes had locked on his and there was a single, delightful bead of sweat above her brow. The expression on her face was one of hunger. Her voice was throaty as she gasped, ‘Who… who are you?’

  For some reason his own voice locked – or was it actually his brain? He found it suddenly impossible to answer the simple question. I am Lord Hairstreak… impressive, of course, but far too formal. What was needed was warmth, intimacy, hints of future wonders and delights. I am Black… but she might not recognise it as a given name, might think it a colour, might grow confused. I am Blackie… the Duke of Burgundy had called him that, in the days when they were bosom friends, but it was more a military comrade thing. Divorced from the military context, it made him sound like a terrier. Besides, a first-name salutation gave no hint of his status and he knew, instinctively, she was a woman to whom status was important. I am Lord Black? Just as bad, in its own way, as I am Lord Hairstreak. Could he say I am Lord Black Hairstreak, inviting intimacy while trumpeting his own importance? Or was that too pretentious? His mind began to spin out of control. How about a pseudonym? I am Bron Fane… that sounded suitably romantic, but it wasn’t a faerie name, so she might think he was concealing something. I am Papilio Cresphontes… a genuine faerie name to be sure, but unfamiliar and a little working class. Besides, how could he possibly explain it was not his own name when the time came to reveal he was, in fact, Lord Hairstreak?

  Suddenly he was back in his kindergarten playground listening to his friend Rubidus joyfully explaining that the thunderbolt left you simpering, whimpering, soppy and floppy with brains so soft they oozed out of your ears. It was happening! It was happening to him now! His mouth was opening and closing like a grounded fish; and emitting just as little noise. Yet the woman, this beautiful, adorable, perfectly delightful woman was looking at him as if he was a god.

  Lord Hairstreak found his voice at last. ‘I am your future, Lady Aisling,’ he told her firmly.

  Thirty-Nine

  They did what they often did in times of crisis: went into private conference in the high-security conservatory Blue’s father had built behind the Throne Room. Henry went at once to pull out the Charaxes ark from underneath one of the benches.

  ‘He’s not going to like this,’ Blue murmured.

  ‘It’s an emergency,’ Henry told her firmly. ‘He’ll just have to lump it.’

  The Charaxes ark was closely modelled on the Ark of Euphrosyne, an ancient artifact Henry had discovered years ago in the care of the Luchti, a desert tribe in far-off Buthner. But it was nowhere near identical. The Luchti Ark had to be triggered by a full ceremonial and even then only operated under certain limited planetary positions. Although the core technology was identical, Henry’s Charaxes ark was more like an old-fashioned two-way radio: you extended an aerial, cranked a handle and asked the built-in microphone if anybody was there. The call sign, though traditional, was a little off-key. It was never just anybody who was there: the box was attuned to a single consciousness, who either answered or didn’t as he saw fit. Which in recent times was less and less often. Henry prayed he would allow the contact now.

  The box emitted the familiar high-pitched whine as he turned the handle, vibrated a little, then beeped twice to indicate readiness. Henry took a deep breath. ‘Is anybody there?’ he asked.

  ‘I thought I told you not to call me at the office.’ Mr Fogarty’s growl came through at once, distorted somewhat by the tinny speaker, but instantly recognisable.

  Not for the first time, Henry had trouble believing Mr Fogarty was dead. He’d sacrificed his life for the sake of the Realm some seventeen years ago now, but the Ark of Euphrosyne and later the Charaxes ark had allowed Henry to keep in touch, albeit reluctantly on Mr Fogarty’s part. The business about the office was a silly joke between them, but the sentiment behind it was serious enough.

  ‘I need your advice,’ Henry said, cutting through any further preliminaries.

  ‘She’s not pregnant again?’

  Henry flushed a little. ‘No she’s not; and she’s here with me.’ He meant So mind your manners, but alive or dead he was still a bit afraid of Mr Fogarty, so he didn’t say it.

  ‘Hello, Blue,’ Fogarty called. He seemed cheerful enough, which was unusual. Since his death, he’d made it quite clear he did not like to be disturbed and was often downright rude when Henry managed to make contact. It was something Henry never really understood. He’d have imagined that when you died, you would be only too happy to chat with somebody still living.

  ‘Hello, Gatekeeper,’ Blue said warmly. Even now she still used the title Mr Fogarty had held while he was still alive. ‘Are you well?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Fogarty responded. There was a audible sniff across the speaker, then he said, ‘I suppose there’s a crisis on?’ Somehow he always sounded more sympathetic to Blue than he did to Henry.

  ‘We’re facing an invasion,’ Henry said.

  ‘Haleklind?’

  It brought Henry up short. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Those clowns were spoiling for a fight long before I moved on. It was only a matter of time.’ A pause. ‘How much time has it been, incidentally?’

  ‘Since you died? Sixteen, seventeen years – something like that.’ Precision didn’t matter. Henry knew Mr Fogarty wouldn’t retain the information. He’d asked the question before; at least once during every contact. The answer meant little to him. Apparently time ran differently on the other side.

  ‘How’s Cynthia? She’s not with you?’

  Mr Fogarty asked about her every contact as well. Henry pushed down his impatience. Mr Fogarty had been a difficult man while he was alive and death had not improved him. ‘She’s busy,’ he said bluntly. ‘But well. Very well. She asked after you.’ He’d made up the last bit, but he knew it would please Mr Fogarty and possibly stop him diverting any more. ‘About Haleklind…?’

  ‘Uppity clowns, wizards,’ Fogarty said. ‘Comes of having too much power. They were bound to give you trouble eventually. What is it? Some sort of magical weapon?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ Henry said. ‘They’re bree
ding manticores.’

  To give him his due, Mr Fogarty got it at once. ‘A manticore army?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t think that was possible.’

  ‘Neither did we,’ Blue put in. She hesitated, then added, ‘There’s something else – they have Mella.’

  There was a pause so long that Henry wondered if the connection had gone down. Although she hadn’t been born until after his death, Mr Fogarty had a soft spot for Mella. It dated from the day when Mella, aged six, had stolen the Charaxes ark and called him.

  ‘Ransom?’

  ‘Not yet. No demands. No contact of any sort.’

  ‘But your intelligence is they have her and are preparing for war with a manticore army?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ Henry said.

  ‘Timing?’

  ‘Not sure. Days, maybe? A week if we’re lucky. Soon, anyway.’

  ‘What’s our state of preparation?’

  Henry liked that our – it meant Mr Fogarty still thought of himself as on their side. It was by no means a foregone conclusion. During some of his more recent contacts, the old boy seemed to be withdrawing not just from the affairs of the Realm, but from the living world in general. Henry glanced at Blue, who said, ‘The standing army is one third the size it was when you were with us, Gatekeeper. Enough for local emergencies, but we were not expecting all-out war.’

  ‘How long to bring it up to full strength?’

  ‘Ten days. But even at full strength we can’t hope to beat a manticore army.’

  ‘What about demons?’ Fogarty asked. ‘I know you don’t want to use them, but…’

  … But Blue was still Queen of Hael, a position she had held, despite several challenges, since she’d slit the throat of Beleth, Prince of Darkness. Henry felt himself shudder slightly. He’d married one tough lady.

  Blue said, ‘I’ll use them, Gatekeeper, if it means saving the Realm. They will take longer to mobilise, perhaps as much as fifteen, perhaps twenty, days. I -’

  ‘Give the order to mobilise,’ Mr Fogarty interrupted.

  ‘I already have,’ Blue said calmly. ‘But my generals advise me that even with demonic back-up, we could not hope to defeat a manticore army of more than a few thousand.’

  ‘How many can the Haleklinders field?’

  ‘More than that, possibly much more than that.’

  Henry said, ‘We were wondering, Mr Fogarty, if you could help.’

  Fogarty’s voice gave a tinny sigh. ‘We’ve been through this before, Henry. Even if I could raise an army here, you know how dangerous that would be.’

  The trouble was Henry didn’t. They had been down this road before, ever since the time Mr Fogarty had let slip his discovery that Emperor Scolitandes the Weedy once raised a battalion of the dead to help in a skirmish against the Ancient Theclinae. He’d lost, as it happened, but that was the result of bad leadership – the dead had fought brilliantly, so much so that the Theclinae never really recovered and went into decline as a culture to disappear from faerie history within a century or so. Admittedly a skirmish fell short of a war and a battalion was a far cry from an army, but if Mr Fogarty was prepared to bring across even a few thousand troops, it was bound to stop the Haleklinders in their tracks. Not even manticores could prevail against death.

  Henry said, ‘I realise there’s a risk involved, but not half as great a risk as facing the manticores without help. If we don’t do something -’ He nearly said, If you don’t do something, but stopped himself just in time, ‘- the Haleklind Table of Seven will rule the entire Realm before the year is out.’

  ‘I want to talk to you about something, Henry,’ Fogarty said; and there was a note in his voice that made Henry instantly uneasy. His unease increased as Mr Fogarty hesitated. Mr Fogarty never hesitated about anything. He was the most decisive, straightforward man Henry had ever known.

  ‘What?’ Henry asked, when he could stand it no longer. He glanced at Blue, who was frowning.

  Eventually Mr Fogarty said, ‘I’m leaving.’

  Henry found himself staring at the Charaxes ark. ‘Leaving?’ he echoed. He wanted to ask where. He wanted to ask why. But he was afraid to ask either.

  In a tone that was almost conversational, Mr Fogarty asked, ‘You ever wondered, Henry, why your grandfather didn’t come back to give you help and advice after he died.’

  ‘I never knew my grandfather,’ Henry said. ‘Neither of them. They were both dead years before I was born.’

  ‘Bad example,’ Mr Fogarty muttered. ‘All right. Have you ever wondered why kind, loving parents who die never come back to help the children they leave behind? Or hardly ever? Don’t even pop in for a word of reassurance? I’m all right, even if I’m dead… I still think about you… You’ll find a few quid in the biscuit tin… that sort of thing?’

  ‘Because the dead can’t come back?’ Henry ventured.

  ‘Are you stupid or what, Henry?’ Mr Fogarty asked crossly. ‘You’re talking to me now. You’re asking me to raise a bloody army. You’ve read the ghost stories. Of course the dead can come back. It’s not even all that difficult. Look how many seances go on back home. There’s a spiritualist church in every city – mightn’t be very big, but they’re there.’

  A little stung by the stupid remark, Henry said, ‘Then they do come back – communicate anyway – through mediums.’ He was increasingly confused about what Mr Fogarty was getting at.

  ‘That’s the children getting in touch with them! The dead aren’t making the first move,’ Mr Fogarty told him impatiently. ‘How many people die in our worlds every day? Millions and millions. And how many pop back for a quick word with the loved one they left behind? A handful. A tiny handful. And you never wondered why that was?’

  ‘Actually -’ Henry began.

  But Mr Fogarty cut him short. ‘I’ll tell you why it is. Life’s a lot different when you’re dead. You see things differently. I don’t just mean you change your opinions about things – although you definitely do that all right – I mean your perception of the world is different. You can see time, for heaven’s sake. That was my biggest surprise: took some getting used to, I can tell you.’

  That meant he could see the future, Henry thought with a sudden surge of excitement. He could tell what was going to happen, how they might get Mella back, exactly when the Haleklinders were going to invade. He opened his mouth to ask a string of questions, but Mr Fogarty cut him short again.

  ‘And before you start wittering at me with all sorts of stupid questions, that doesn’t mean I can tell you the future,’ Mr Fogarty said. ‘When you’re dead, you see time like a huge field. People go wandering all over it. You can see where they’ve been, but they decide where they’re going, so everybody’s future changes all the time depending on where you decide to go. I can tell you what might happen, not what definitely will, but I could do that before I died. You could do it for yourself if you ever bothered to think.’ He coughed, as if clearing the throat he no longer possessed. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to get sidetracked. The point is things change when you die. You change. Things that used to be important just aren’t important any more. Don’t get me wrong: people are important – you still love them or hate them – but what happens to them isn’t as important as they think it is because you see where they’ve been and where they could be going and how they could double back and so forth.’

  Henry glanced at Blue again. This wasn’t making very much sense to him. ‘Mr Fogarty,’ he said, ‘this isn’t making very much sense to me.

  I -’

  ‘You die twice,’ Fogarty told him.

  Henry blinked. ‘You what?’

  ‘There’s a second death,’ Mr Fogarty said. ‘You die once – your body dies – but it doesn’t actually kill you. You get to fart around as a ghost, sometimes in your old familiar physical world – great fun that, nobody can see you – sometimes in the dream worlds. Hard to say how long it lasts: time’s weird when you don’t h
ave a physical body – that’s why I keep asking you how long it’s been. From your point of view it could be hours or years, from mine it’s almost like time doesn’t pass at all. Except it does; and mine’s nearly up.’

  Henry held himself completely still. Despite the threat to Mella, despite the impending war, he was suddenly focused on a different, chilling fear.

  ‘The thing is,’ Mr Fogarty went on, ‘the ghost body you’re in doesn’t last forever. It dies as well, exactly like your physical body. The second death. Mine’s coming close.’

  ‘What happens to you after…?’ Henry asked. ‘What happens to your

  …’ He wanted to say soul, but it sounded prissy and Mr Fogarty had never been a religious man, ‘… consciousness?’ he finished softly.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Mr Fogarty told him shortly. ‘But in the circumstances, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for me to raise you another army.’ Henry thought there was genuine regret in his voice as he added, ‘Or help you about Mella, come to that.’

  Forty

  Mella sat on her chair, staring thoughtfully at the floor. She should have felt happy. The man who said he was her uncle would take her home soon and restore her memory. Soon she would know who she was and how she’d got here. Soon she would be able to get on with her life; and it sounded like an interesting life if she had a Lord for an uncle. What more could she ask for? Yet she felt uneasy and, when she tried to talk herself out of it, she continued to feel uneasy. Uncle or not, there was something about Lord Hairstreak that repelled her.