The Faeman Quest fw-5 Read online

  Aboventoun lowered his head, then slowly, carefully, bent his forelegs. Mella wondered what on earth he was trying to do, then realised he was kneeling. She stared, open-mouthed, at the thing he was kneeling to.

  If she’d thought about it at all, Mella must have assumed that the leader of the manticores would be a manticore himself. Or possibly herself. But she should perhaps have thought to ask herself how one dumb beast, however dominant, could persuade another of its kind to talk. What she was looking at was big and strong and fierce all right, but it was no manticore. It was huge and fanged and humanoid and feathered, with fiery saucer eyes and strangler’s hands. It rose to tower above her as it towered above Aboventoun and every other nearby creature. She could see it, she could smell it – it had a heavy spice scent – yet in some peculiar way it did not seem to be really there at all.

  It sniffed her scent through twitching nostrils, then smiled a smile of recognition. ‘I knew your mother once,’ it told her in a voice that reverberated through her head.

  Mella opened her mouth then closed it again. It seemed impossible for her to speak. If the manticores were frightening, this thing was positively terrifying. I knew your mother once? Mella tried again to speak and failed.

  ‘I am Yidam,’ said the creature. ‘But thou may call me George.’

  Forty-Six

  There was no way Mella was going to call this creature George. The way it shimmered on the edge of existence made her wonder if it somehow permitted her to see it, permitted the manticores to see it. They seemed respectful, but at ease, although this thing, this Yidam, was even bigger than they were and radiated an aura of power that was almost overwhelming. She knew what she was looking at, even though she had never seen anything like it before or heard the name. I knew your mother once. If that was true, it was something her mother had never spoken about.

  Mella felt Mella II move to her side. ‘What is it?’ Mella II whispered.

  ‘It’s one of the Old Gods,’ Mella whispered back without taking her eyes off the creature: it was impossible to take her eyes off the creature. ‘They sometimes intervene in faerie affairs.’ That was something she did know about from her mother. Blue had often told the story of how Henry rescued her from the dragon, and while Mella always thought it had to be grossly exaggerated – both her parents assumed she was positively naive – there was one detail that had lodged firmly in her mind. Another of the Old Gods – his name was Loki – had intervened big time in the whole affair. But it wasn’t the intervention that impressed Mella. After all, there were loads of ancient legends about the Gods appearing when they were least expected. No, what impressed Mella was the reason Blue gave for the intervention. She could still hear the words sounding in her mind:

  ‘A priest once told me the Old Gods believe that mortal lives are lived to act out certain stories. Sometimes they intervene to make sure the stories turn out the way they should – they way they were fated to.’ Then the coy little smile. ‘So I suppose your father and I were fated to get married and have you.’

  The sentimentality of the fated to get married and have you bit usually made Mella want to puke, but while she would have died rather than admit it, there was something fascinating about the idea of acting out your own story, your own heroic story, with the help of the Gods. Was she too wrapped up in a story, the way her mother had been once? Other words of Blue’s slid into her mind:

  ‘Never get the idea the dangers aren’t real. The stories aren’t made up: they’re the patterns of the ways we lead our lives. Some of them end in tragedy. Your father could have been eaten by the dragon – we both could. He was brave and he was strong and it didn’t happen… but it could have. There are no guarantees.’

  Mella wondered if she had the courage and the strength to live the sort of story her parents had once faced. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to, but surely the very fact that the Yidam was standing before her showed she had some important, heroic, story to live? The question was, what? Actually, the question was, could she survive it? As her mother said, there were no guarantees.

  At her side, as if reading her mind, Mella II murmured, ‘We can get through this together.’

  Mella felt a flooding of courage. ‘Lord Yidam,’ she said, ‘how did you know my mother?’ Was it permitted to question a god? Too late – she’d just done it.

  If the Yidam disapproved, he gave no sign. ‘She called me to ask a question about war and peace.’

  ‘She never told me that,’ Mella murmured. Her mother had never ever mentioned the Yidam at all. Not once. Which was seriously weird. Surely if you met an Old God, you’d boast about it for years?

  ‘Nor should she. It was part of her burden of shame.’ The Yidam leaned forward and held Mella’s eye. ‘There are echoes in thy story.’

  Mella licked her lips. ‘What do you mean, Lord Yidam?’ She was aware the Old Gods were dangerous, far more dangerous than any manticore, yet somehow she felt no fear of this one. Respect and caution certainly, but no real fear. Having Mella II at her side made a difference. It was as if all her courage had been doubled.

  ‘Is there not the threat of war?’ the Yidam asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Mella II said promptly. She turned to Mella and whispered, ‘What I was telling you – the Haleklinders and the manticores and Lord Hairstreak and everything.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know!’ Mella hissed back impatiently.

  ‘And art thou not the only ones who can stop it?’ asked the Yidam.

  Mella blinked.

  They held a conference, all three of them, squatting cross-legged on the earth, surrounded by the manticore herd. The Yidam’s head remained higher than a manticore’s back and the Old God still towered over the two Mellas, yet their little circle seemed somehow… friendly. What they discussed, by contrast, was terrifying.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘It is thy story.’

  ‘How can one person stop a war?’

  ‘Thou are not one person: thou art two.’

  ‘How can two people stop a war?’ A note of desperation had crept into Mella’s voice, but the Yidam was relentless.

  ‘Thy story is thy fate.’ The Yidam stared at her silently.

  After a while, Mella ventured, ‘Will you help us?’

  ‘The Old Gods cannot interfere in the affairs of faerie,’ the Yidam told her piously.

  Mella lost it. ‘Of course you can!’ she shrieked. ‘You’re interfering all the time! You’re interfering now! ’ She was shouting at an Old God and she didn’t care. Loki had interfered. The Yidam knew her mother. The Yidam was the leader of the manticores. Of course the Old Gods interfered! The Old Gods were practically control freaks!

  The Yidam grinned at her benignly.

  After a while, Mella calmed down enough to ask, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ She had a vivid mental picture of herself as a tiny, tiny figure at the head of rebel soldiers they’d drummed up from somewhere. It was ludicrous, but the picture would not go away. Maybe she could wear high heels.

  ‘That is not for me to say,’ the Yidam told her irritatingly.

  ‘He means we have to figure out for ourselves what to do,’ said Mella II brightly.

  ‘That is what I mean,’ the Yidam echoed.

  Mella looked from one to the other, half in fury, half in panic. ‘We can’t figure out something like that!’ she shouted so loudly that a nearby manticore shied away. ‘That’s politics and military decisions and the fate of nations and the future of our empire and I’m not even sixteen yet! We can’t do stuff like that! We can’t! We can’t!’

  ‘Yes, we can,’ said Mella II.

  ‘Go back to first principles,’ suggested the Yidam.

  Mella decided she hated the Yidam, even if he had known her mother. He was smug and he was bossy and he was totally unhelpful. She wasn’t all that keen on Mella II at the moment either: she was far too gung-ho for their own good. She took a deep breath and asked sourly, ‘ What first principles?’

  The Yidam didn
’t answer, but her irritating sister did. ‘He means we should think carefully about what’s happening here; and what’s about to happen. He means we should think about Lord Hairstreak’s dastardly plot to take over the Realm and how he’s proceeded with it so far. We know…’ She sat up straight and began to count briskly on her fingers, ‘… dastardly plot step one that Hairstreak made me to replace you… then, dastardly plot step two, he arranged a coup to overthrow the legitimate government of Haleklind… then, dastardly plot step three, he encouraged the new revolutionary Haleklind Table of Seven to breed manticores as weapons… and finally, dastardly plot step four, he plans to unleash the manticores on the Realm, probably any minute now.’

  ‘Yes, I know all -’ Mella began.

  But Mella II would not be interrupted. ‘Now the great thing is we’ve already foiled dastardly plot step one. He can’t replace you with me, because we’ve both escaped his dastardly clutches -’

  ‘I wish you’d stop saying ‘dastardly’,’ Mella muttered. ‘It sounds silly.’

  ‘All right,’ said Mella II mildly. ‘We’ve escaped his dastardly clutches – I won’t say it again after that – and we’re working together so he can’t replace you with me and even if he did, I wouldn’t do what he told me, so it would be pointless. That means all we have to do now is undo the other steps of his das- of his plot and we’ve won. We need to warn our parents about what’s going on and especially about Lord Hairstreak’s involvement. That’s probably the most important thing. We simply have to get a message to the Purple Palace.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose you could do that, could you, Lord Yidam?’

  ‘No,’ the Yidam said shortly. But he was watching her with interest.

  ‘No, I thought not,’ Mella II muttered, frowning. ‘Actually they might not believe a message unless we delivered it personally.’ She looked back at Mella. ‘But that wouldn’t be enough, of course. Ideally we also need to stop the Table of Seven launching an attack. Once we’ve done that, everything falls into place. War averted, parents saved, Lord Hairstreak locked away in some deep dungeon, perfect ending to your story. Our story, as it must be now.’

  ‘Why don’t we just change the entire world while we’re at it?!’ Mella snapped. ‘ How? You tell me how! We’re surrounded by manticores somewhere in Haleklind with no transport, no money, no weapons and a big fat toothy supernatural entity who tells us what to do but won’t raise a finger to help us.’ She glared at the Yidam. ‘Well, come on – tell me how!’

  The Old God gazed at her almost fondly. ‘Nobody knows thy story except thyself,’ he said. ‘But thou hadst better think of something quickly. Lord Hairstreak is already in the forest.’

  Mella felt herself go cold. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know everything,’ the Yidam told her. ‘Except thy story, of course.’

  ‘Is he close?’

  ‘Not yet. But he is on thy trail and following his own story. Thou dost not have much time.’

  Mella stared at him wide-eyed. ‘He can’t get us while we’re surrounded by your manticores, can he?’

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps not,’ the Yidam said softly. ‘But thou canst not hide forever…’

  Mella wondered if there was some penalty for strangling an Old God. The Yidam was the most infuriating creature she had ever met. She wasn’t planning to hide forever. She wasn’t planning to hide at all. All she wanted was a little support from -

  ‘I have an idea,’ said Mella II abruptly. She grabbed Mella’s arm. ‘Let’s go somewhere private for a minute.’

  ‘Stay thou clear of the trees,’ the Yidam told them. ‘Aboventoun was my messenger, but I do not control the forest manticores.’

  Forty-Seven

  ‘Can you suggest an alternative?’ Blue asked coldly.

  Henry hated it when she was in this mood, although he had to admit it went with the territory. Above everything else, above being his wife, his lover, his very best friend in two worlds, Blue was Queen. Her prime responsibility was the welfare of the Realm (along with the welfare of Hael, but he didn’t like to think of that too often) and just now the Realm was threatened as it had never been before.

  ‘Not as such,’ he said carefully. ‘But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t examine the proposal carefully. It’s an extreme course of action.’

  ‘It’s an extreme situation.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Pyrgus said. ‘They’re innocent animals.’

  ‘They’re military weapons,’ Blue said shortly.

  The proposal had been voiced by Madame Cardui, promptly backed by General Vanelke, who, Henry suspected, was still irritated about the abortive plan to save Mella without involving his soldiers.

  ‘Look,’ Henry said, ‘I think we should concentrate on Mella. We still -’

  Mella’s disappearance was driving Blue crazy, not that Henry would have expected anything else: mother love always beat father love hands down. It would be killing her that there was nothing they could do for Mella until they had new information on her whereabouts. But Blue’s way of handling it was to go on the attack.

  ‘You know we have no way of finding Mella yet,’ she snapped. ‘So perhaps you could stop wasting everybody’s time and -’

  Henry avoided conflict whenever he could, but that didn’t mean he was afraid to push when it was necessary; and it was definitely necessary now. He held Blue’s gaze and said firmly, ‘It’s no waste of time where our daughter’s safety is concerned. Can’t you reactivate your follower?’ He caught the startled glances in the Situation Room. Followers might no longer be illegal, but they were considered extremely bad form among Faeries of the Light. The thought that the Queen of Faerie might actually use one was as unthinkable as the idea that the Queen of England might appear on Horse Guards Parade dressed in frilly knickers. He knew Blue wouldn’t thank him for mentioning the follower in public, but he was getting desperate.

  Blue glared at him. ‘All right,’ she said angrily. ‘Since you insist on shouting from the rooftops, my follower was never deactivated. It finally found her as she entered Haleklind.’ She hesitated, but only barely. ‘At which point it fell foul of Haleklind’s advanced magical securities. The follower is dead, Henry. I sent its body back to Hael for cremation an hour ago.’

  ‘Oh,’ Henry said, chastened. But he couldn’t afford to stay chastened for long. ‘All right, scrub the follower. So we don’t know where she is and we don’t have a quick way to find out, but we can be reasonably sure she’s still in Haleklind. How sensible is it for us to start a war against Haleklind while she’s still there?’

  ‘We’re not starting a war,’ Vanelke grumbled. ‘They are.’

  ‘We’re not starting a war,’ Blue echoed. ‘We’re making a pre-emptive strike. The whole idea is to stop a war.’

  ‘We’re discussing Madame Cardui’s suggestion of a pre-emptive strike,’ Henry corrected her.

  ‘And I don’t like it,’ Pyrgus put in fiercely. ‘Not that sort of a pre-emptive strike.’ He snorted bitterly. ‘It’s obscene.’

  ‘It involves the least loss of faerie life,’ Madame Cardui said mildly.

  ‘And the slaughter of thousands of innocent animals!’

  Pyrgus had gone red in the face now, as he often did when talking about animal welfare. In another couple of minutes he would lose his temper, as he often did when talking about animal welfare. That made him likely to shout at his sister, shake Madame Cardui and quite possibly bop Vanelke on the nose.

  ‘There are political implications to a neutron spell,’ Henry said to turn the discussion in a different direction.

  There was silence for a moment. They all knew about the political implications of a neutron spell. It had been outlawed in warfare by international treaty for more than a century. The spell was officially listed both as black magic and a weapon of mass destruction. You could lay it on an entire population if you had a big enough power source. It killed living creatures, but left property intact for looting. Henry shivered. Pyrgus was
right about one thing: neutron spells were obscene.

  He looked pointedly from one face to another. The first – and prime – provision of the treaty was that neutron spells should never be used against fellow faeries or allied races in warfare. The second was that neutron spells should no longer be manufactured. The third was that all existing stockpiles of neutron spells should be destroyed. Since the signing, in Blue’s great-grandfather’s day, the first provision had held, more or less. (There had been some small-scale use of neutron technology in the Battle of Inkcap, but the claim was that it had been accidental and less than a score of people died.) The second and third provisions had been resolutely ignored. Most countries maintained secret laboratories where neutron spells and other banned magics were created. Most countries maintained clandestine stocks of the weaponry. What stopped their use, frankly, was fear. Nobody wanted to be the first to cast a neutron spell in case the enemy had sufficient power reserves to strike back in kind. Until now, that was.

  Madame Cardui, who’d made the suggestion in the first place, said, ‘My calculations are that there may be fewer implications than one would imagine.’

  ‘How do you make that out?’ Pyrgus demanded, his voice still angry.

  ‘Firstly,’ Madame Cardui said coolly, ‘all our intelligence on the matter suggests there are very few countries with the power resources to do us much damage. They have the spells, of course, but not enough power reserves to drive them to anything like their ultimate potential.’

  ‘Haleklind has the resources,’ Henry interrupted. Haleklind’s reserves of magical power were massive, exceeded only by the combined reserves of the entire Empire.

  ‘Haleklind does,’ Madame Cardui nodded. ‘But the question is whether Haleklind would wish to be seen to be the first to break the prime provision of the treaty.’