Sebaceous leaned closer, as if frightened of being overheard. “We draconi, we are not wise like wizards, but we are not ignoramuses neither. The one you call the Faerie King, he is not here by accident. He knows that near here is a source of great power. He has made his settlement down there because, even though he does not know where it is, his metal and wood people can nourish themselves simply by being nearby.”
“Yes, I saw them,” Bill said, “they connected themselves to the walls, but I don’t know where the power actually came from.”
“There are pockets, little pockets, here and there, scattered about. But most of the power is in one place, and it is this that he seeks. He thinks we know where it is, so he hunts draconi and digs out our homes. But we will not tell him, for if he finds it, he will have ultimate power to rule all three worlds, and we would be his slaves”
Bill was intrigued and disturbed. “What is this place?”
“It is the source of all powers, yours and all others who have magic. It is the heart of elfdom and the key to the portals. Any who possess it would have ultimate power over everypeople else. A fragment is enough for its owner to become the strongest magician of their age and so none is permitted to approach. The elfs, they is proud and sometimes cruel, but they isn’t stupid. And, in any case, it kills all who approach. But it can’t kill those who is already dead.”
“Humunculus?”
Sebaceous nodded. “And the other machines. If they find it, they can wield it. They would not be the first to try. Some from this world, some from yours.”
“But who else could have taken its power without dying? You said it killed.”
“Yes,” the little lizard whispered, “but the thief lives long enough to trap it.”
“And then he dies? What’s the point of that?”
Sebaceous treated Bill to a withering expression. “The thief dies, but not the one who sent him. The power is trapped in objects and then is safe. But these are fragments, the Faerie King seeks the source. And if he finds it, we are lost.”
“So where is this source?”
Sebaceous shrugged. “I does not know.”
Bill threw up his arms in exasperation. “Then how am I meant to stop him?”
“By killing them all,” Sebaceous began, before putting up his hand to hold off Bill’s response, “but since you has said you won’t do that, the problem - it is now yours.”
Chapter 20
“I COULD DO WITH A brew,” Gramma said as she trudged along. “I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned it or not, but I could really do with a brew.”
Mother Hemlock sighed. “Yes, you’ve mentioned it once or twice.”
They were walking along a cobbled road that skirted the east of Montesham and dusk had fallen with no sign of an inn or even a house. In fact, their only company on the road was the ever increasing number of trees on either side. Jessie began to imagine she might have miscalculated when she’d insisted they not stop at that last tavern; it had been, after all, only mid-afternoon and they’d had several hours of walking ahead of them. And yet they’d passed no other dwellings of any sort and were now facing the prospect of an uncomfortable night under the trees.
“Oh, I can just ‘ear the sound of a keckle brewing. A nice cup of tea would be very welcome right about now.”
Mother Hemlock turned to her husband, who was walking along beside her silently. “What d’you reckon? Are we likely to find anywhere better to sleep than this spot ‘ere? It’ll at least give us a little shelter?”
“Shelter?” Gramma interrupted, “If that’s shelter, then four legs and no tail make a mouse.”
Badger pondered this. He’d long ago learned that the old woman often found new wisdom in the old idioms she misquoted. On this occasion, however, he concluded that she was talking a load of old bollocks.
“It’ll do, I s’pose,” said Flem with all the enthusiasm of a fox in a fur factory.
Mother Hemlock’s shoulders sagged. Her husband had barely talked to her at all since she’d announced her intention to consult Ignis Bel. It was ridiculous. She had, after all, chosen Flem. In the end.
“Right," said Mother Hemlock, sighing, "we’re stopping here Gramma, and that's final."
The old woman shuffled off the road and began rummaging in her backpack. "Well, if that's the way it's got to be, I'll get the keckle on." She busied herself with gathering kindling and putting together a makeshift fire with the aid of Stinky Willy.
Mother Hemlock and Flem spent an uncomfortable few minutes strolling around a little clearing on apparently random courses that were carefully constructed to ensure that neither met the other’s gaze.
Within a few minutes the little black kettle was singing and Gramma was humming a nonsensical tune to herself as she anticipated her first caffeine of the afternoon.
An arrow thudded into one of the trees and they turned at the sound of running feet to see swords drawn and a huge shape looming out of the trees beside the clearing.
"Put down your weapons," cried the voice of Sergeant McGuff as he strode across the road with sword drawn, "you is now prisoners of Robbing Hood and you is to empty your pockets and hand over your valuables or you will be… oh 'eck!"
#
Chortley Fitzmichael sat by the fire as evening fell in the forest. His mood was low, so low that he hadn't even bothered to accompany his merry men on their latest raiding expedition. News had reached him that a group of travellers had been seen on the forest road and that had at least given his followers something to do.
It was the uncertainty that he found so difficult to cope with. Here he was trapped in the deep woods of his homeland, afraid to show his face for fear of having it and the rest of his head removed from his body. He felt that in front of him lay two paths, one dictated by his human destiny, the other by his faerie heritage. He knew that he was needed in both worlds but, until Velicity was located, he felt hamstrung and trapped in this godforsaken wood.
So it was with little interest that he noticed the sounds of tramping feet that marked the return of his men.
“Who were they and how much did you get, sergeant?” he said, not bothering to turn around.
“More than he bargained for, I should say,” said the unmistakable voice of Mother Hemlock.
Chortley almost fell into the fire as he leapt to his feet and staggered backwards. "What the hells are you doing here?" he managed as he steadied himself. Aside from the sudden appearance of his sister, Chortley struggled to think of anyone more likely to depress his mood more than the advent of the senior witch.
"We was just going to have a nice cup of tea after a long walk this afternoon," said Gramma. "The keckle was boiling and everything – I even had a nice biscuit hidden in me ginnel all soft and crunchy."
The old woman pushed past her escort, shoved the kettle on to the embers of the fire, sat on a log and began fishing in her skirts. Chortley turned away.
"So what are you doing here?" he said.
Mother Hemlock sat down on the log and beckoned Chortley to sit next to her as Flem and Willy found room alongside Gramma. The merry men lurked shamefacedly in the shadows. Despite no longer being in the military hierarchy, McGuff retained a very sensible caution around Chortley who, it seemed to him, was becoming progressively more unpredictable as their stay in the forest continued.
"Ah that's better," she said. "My feet ache something awful after all that walking, and all on account of that sister of yours."
"Believe me, I have enough grudges when it comes to Aggrapella for both of us. I've been sitting in this dank forest for so long I'm not sure my arse will ever dry out."
Mother Hemlock chuckled grimly. "Well, I dare say you has a point, but me and Gramma are on the run because of your sister and my Brianna is risking her life to warn your girlfriend, they're sure to go after her as well."
"I know," Chortley said, "she was here. She wants me to go after her lover boy because, apparently, I'm the only one who can survive in the Beyond."
Chortley poked the fire absentmindedly as the kettle began to emit wisps of vapour that looked disturbingly like tortured souls as they caught the moonlight. “That’s true enough,” he said, “but what’s more important, one man or the future of an entire realm?”
“You reckon you’d do a better job of runnin’ the country than yon sister, do you cock?” Gramma said.
Mother Hemlock regarded Fitzmichael with an appraising eye. “I reckon the people would be safer with a dragon on the throne. But, aside from that, yes, I think you’d make a decent count. I wouldn’t ‘ave said that a year ago, but you’ve changed a lot since then.”
“And much good it’s done me,” huffed Chortley, as he struggled to maintain his self-pity in the face of such a rare compliment. “Here I sit, an outlaw with a band of incompetent henchmen, a wet arse and no idea what to do next.”
“But you’ve also got a fine lass what loves you, cock. And that would not ‘ave ‘appened to the old Chortley Fitzmichael,” Gramma said.
Chortley warmed, his face flushing. And then doubt grabbed his testicles. “Well, I’m not likely to find out any time soon, I don’t even know where she is.”
“She’s here, my love.” And Velicity De Vere slipped into the clearing, appearing like an imaginary elfling37 at the dawning of creation. Brianna, who in any other company would have been considered nimble, seemed to stagger into the light, her cheeks flushed and an expression of barely suppressed aggravation.
Chortley leapt to his feet in quite as much shock and terror as when Mother Hemlock had surprised him. He reflexively brushed the breadcrumbs from his front and smoothed his hair, and was only barely in time to open his arms as Velicity rushed into his embrace.
Skirting the emotional hurricane that was the Chortley/Velicity vortex, Brianna stomped up to her mother and nodded. “Mother.”
“I see you found ‘er then,” Mother Hemlock said, gesturing in the direction of the lovers without actually looking at them.
Brianna scowled. “Apparently.”
"Was she in trouble?"
Brianna shrugged. "Well, she was hiding beneath the bed of a pompous dwarf with artistic pretensions so I guess the answer is yes. She told me she'd had a narrow escape when hired thugs turned up at her apartment building asking which flat she lived in. Luckily she'd anticipated this and had agreed a secret signal that the man on the door would use when suspicious types turned up. So she managed to slip out of the window, climb down a drain pipe and make her way to the dwarf’s place."
"Not as stupid as some may imagine then," Mother Hemlock said, "but we now has to decide what to do."
Jerking her thumb in the general direction of the entwined lovers, Brianna said. "I think I persuaded loverboy over there to go after Bill once I'd rescued his sweetheart. But I'm not so sure he's going to be keen to go now. I said I'd take on the robbing while he was away and looking at the state of his men I couldn't do a worse job. Someone needs to be keeping that sister of his occupied while the rest of us do what needs to be done."
"And what, exactly, is it that needs to be done?"
Brianna's face darkened. "Isn't it obvious? Someone needs to go after that bloody idiot and bring him back."
"Why?" Mother Hemlock asked, deciding that the time had come to finally deal with the gorilla in the room. "It seemed pretty clear to me that you didn’t want to go through with it when the day came for you to be joined permanent like. So why do you care?"
"I never said I didn't care mother, I just wondered whether it would mean the end of an adventurous life. I didn't want to be just a farmer's wife."
Mother Hemlock smiled grimly. "Well, if it was adventure you were looking for, you certainly got your wish."
"Well, ain't that the way of it,” she continued. “The last thing people really want is what they ask for, that's why I make it a policy never to do what anyone asks me. I do what I think is right and that way, generally, everyone's happy. Didn't make me particularly popular at yuletide as I recall, though."
"What do I do mum?" Brianna whispered. "I want him back, but I don't know where he's gone or whether he's even still alive." Her face darkened further as she paused for a moment. "No, he's alive, I know it. We just have to find a way to bring his scrawny arse back so he can account for running off like that in the first place."
"That's my girl, that's the Hemlock attitude or, to be more precise, the sort of thing that young Jessie Cobb might well have said. So here's what we’re going to do."
Mother Hemlock took her daughter by the hand and guided her to sit down by the fire. "I know a man who reckons he can help, the cleverest man I ever met. So if there's anything to be done he'll know it. Gramma and I was heading there anyway, along with that lummox of a father of yours and that Willy what's tagging along at Gramma's tail. I see no purpose in you staying here, nor loverboy over there and Miss Windy Pants. No I reckons we has to go mob handed. We has to go to see Ignis Bel.
Chapter 21
WISE MEN SAY, APPARENTLY, THAT only fools rush in. A really wise man might suggest that, while a fool might make a mistake, it takes a complete idiot to repeat it. These thoughts were plaguing Bill like a two-day old sweet and sour as he crept his way into the settlement of the machines. Again.
He was puzzled, and more than a little suspicious, that the gap through which he'd entered the village two nights before was still there. It was as if Humunculus had anticipated this very action on Bill's part and laid a trap.
But this was Bill's bed and he was determined to lie in it, even though it was becoming painfully obvious that this particular bed was made up mainly of sharp pointy bits. Sebaceous was, according to his own inexorable logic, absolutely correct – his world and Bill's would both be much safer if the machines were simply destroyed. But the short period he'd spent in the company of the robot family had affected Bill more deeply than he'd expected. There were children here. Sure, these kids were of a rectangular disposition, needed recharging at night, and were made largely of metal and wood, but inside their artificial bodies lay the souls of innocent kids.
So he crept to the window of the machine family and peered in. They weren't there. A terrible thought occurred to him, a thought not born from logic but out of the depths of his dread, as if in his heart he knew what Humunculus would do once he'd learned of Bill's escape. The evil fool would assume that the family had, somehow, helped him get away and so Bill knew where they'd be.
"They're not here," he said to his pocket.
In the darkness he could just see a glimmer of green as Sebaceous' head popped out of Bill's trousers. "Then we must escape, brave friend Bill. We cannot help them, if we do not know where they are."
"Oh, I know where they are," said Bill grimly. "They're in that room you rescued me from – in a settlement as small as this there can be only one gaol cell."
Bill could see the glimmer pulsing as Sebaceous shook his head vigorously. "No, friend Bill, we were lucky to escape last time, gaol is too far from the gap in the fence. We will be trapped, come let us go."
But Bill was already running, ducking beneath the open windows as he passed hut after hut, working his way towards the centre of the camp where he thought the gaol must be based on his recollection of their escape route last time.
#
In the end, he almost ran past it in his haste, and it was the sound of moaning that caused him to stop and look across the narrow alley at the dark building with the heavy padlock.
Bill crept to the door and pressed his ear against the crudely cut wood. Yes, someone was inside, someone in pain. Carefully, he examined the lock which to his astonishment was also made of wood although it was considerably more delicate in its construction than most of the objects he'd seen.
He peered up and down the gloomy street, illuminated by nothing more than the occasional ca
ndle lamp, gently swaying in the breeze of a summer night. He called the heat into his hands and, cupping them around the padlock, he felt it dissolve as the miasma of burnt wood invaded his nostrils.
"Poo, that stinks," Sebaceous said, "but we must work fast, before alarm is raised."
Bill crumbled the remnants of the padlock and felt the door release. The moaning from inside stopped, but he could hear movement – metallic movement. Gently, he pushed the door to. It opened onto complete and utter darkness, the lights in the street unable to penetrate the gloom inside, so he pushed a little heat into his hands and held them high, gasping at what he saw.
Stingzlikeabee lay on the floor, her frightened face gazing up at Bill and the fire burning in his hands. She lay between the legs of a kneeling wooden figure that, it seemed, had been cradling her head. Her upper leg was covered in a bloodsoaked bandage, the lower leg was gone.
The elf's scaly face was even whiter than usual, she looked little better than her sister, and she'd been trapped in a tunnel for weeks before Chortley had come across her beneath the laboratory of Minus.
Bill could see well enough now that gathered around her was the entire machine family that had welcomed him in two nights ago. One of the two larger figures, the one that had been cradling the elf, looked up at him, the light that emanated from within much paler than when he last met the machines.
"You fool," it whispered, its words and movements laboured as if it were at the uttermost end of exhaustion. "You should never have come back, you should never have come looking for us."
"Where is Humunculus? Is he waiting to spring out on me, like last time?"
The machine’s head shook in denial. "We did not know he was there," it said, the glow dimming perceptively as it spoke. "We hid you because we wanted so much to talk to someone from our world, someone who hadn't suffered our terrible fate. We would have seen you safe out of the camp. But he is coming, and he knows everything."
"Then why isn't he here?" asked Bill.
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