by Tad Williams
"That's still a horrible thing," Theo said despite his own determination not to interrupt again.
"What is?" "Stealing a child." "Even when I was promised that the child would be raised as a member of one of the high families? That it would want for nothing?"
"That's fine for the child, but what about the baby's parents, its real parents? That would ruin their lives, having their baby disappear." A long moment passed. To Theo's surprise, when Dowd spoke again there was no anger left, nothing but a bleak emptiness. "Of course. Of course. And I knew that. Knew also that on such short notice I would have little chance to find a child who deserved to be saved, one whose parents were bullying monsters or drunkards or drug addicts — little chance to salve my conscience by stealing a child whose parents, I could tell myself, deserved it. So as I prepared to leave New Erewhon I was on the horns of a terrible dilemma. If the Remover was wrong, or lying, I would never see my love Erephine again. If he was right, I would regain what I had lost only by inflicting a dreadful loss on someone else."
You shouldn't have agreed to it , Theo thought but did not say. There are some bargains you just can't make. But he still felt a kind of pity for the thing that had been Eamonn Dowd. He had been hammered by love a few times himself, badly enough that he had done some really idiotic things. He had slept in his car outside one ex-girlfriend's house three freezing nights in a row just so he could torture himself by watching her go in and out with her new boyfriend, compelled against all sense to make himself miserable imagining what they were doing in bed together just inside. He certainly understood being violently, almost criminally love-stupid. But there are still limits. There have to be limits.
"As it turned out, the old Remover was far more subtle than I understood," Dowd went on, his whispery voice distant with what might have been grief. "He had many projects in hand and was not going to squander such an opportunity on just one. That very night, as I lay sleepless on my bed, someone knocked at my door. It was a uniformed doonie — you must have met a few of them by now — and he told me I was to accompany him. I was confused, but because I thought it might be something the Remover had arranged to help accomplish our plot, or that the doonie might even have been sent to bring me back here to the Remover's house, I dressed and got into the huge black luxury coach and we sped across New Erewhon.
"We didn't go all the way to the waterfront, but toward the center of town instead, into Eventide. It was only when we suddenly turned in at one of its back entrances that I understood that for some reason I had been summoned to Violet House. I had been there before. The Violets were among the families who were, if not friendly to mortals, reasonably tolerant of them.
"As the bodyguards carefully searched me before allowing me out of the garage and into the main house, I began to realize for the first time how bad things had gotten between the highest Flower houses just during the months of my downfall and my trial in Parliament, when I had been largely oblivious to other events. There were soldiers everywhere in the compound, a private army, and they were all busy. The house seemed to be preparing for some kind of imminent assault, maybe even a full-blown war. Actually, as I found out later, they were preparing for what would happen when they lost that war.
"The doonie chauffeur was left behind and a young, high-handed fairy of the Violet clan inner circle took charge of me with as much enthusiasm as if I were a basket of dirty linen, hurrying me into the heart of the house. I was searched one more time by a quartet of ogre guards, then ushered into the house library. Belleius Violet, the head of the family, was waiting there for me.
"I can probably best describe him if I tell you that he was something like the head of a wealthy old New England family — Boston Brahmins, as we used to call them. As fairy nobility goes he was better than most, reasonably fair-minded, no crueler than average. In fact, by the standards of his people he would have to be called a liberal. This does not mean he treated me well that night. He was angry and heartsick, and it must also have galled him to have to turn in his most desperate need to one such as I — a mortal, an interloper.
" 'You have received a fitting punishment for your presumption, Eamonn Dowd,' he said to me. 'Do not think I feel sympathy for you. But it is not because, as many in the other houses do, I deem my blood above yours, although even among mortals I understand yours is not particularly distinguished. Rather, I object to what you did because we of the ruling families constitute the thin walls that separate our world from the barbarous old days, and we simply cannot afford to let ourselves be diluted with mortal ideas, our daughters taken as wives by mortals, our houses inherited by them. That may not be what you intended but I know well how things happen, how one liberty opens the door for the rest. If such a thing came to pass, we would soon be only an adjunct of your world. That cannot be allowed.' That's what he said to me by way of hello." Dowd allowed himself a sour, wheezing chuckle. "And remember, he was one of the progressive party.
"I asked him if he had brought me all the way across town merely to insult me and my race. He grew angry, but could not afford to lose his temper, as I guessed. I didn't press my advantage. I had also guessed that the hand of the Remover was in this somewhere and I didn't have much time left. Much of the night was already gone and in the morning I was to be taken to Strawflower Square.
"It took a while — he had to call for a stiff drink to nerve himself to be open with someone like me. To be fair, it was a terrible moment for him, one nobody would envy. He began with a rambling explanation of what I had seen outside, which confirmed my guess that not only had things become very bad between the seven ruling houses, they were worse than I could have imagined.
"In short, war was about to break out. All of the other ruling houses were either supporting Hellebore — for he was the instigator, of course — or were unwilling to resist him openly. Only Violet stood against him, and that meant that Violet House would almost certainly lose."
"What were they fighting about?" "Ah, yes. That is, of course, a significant detail. It wasn't known to me at the time, but it certainly is to you now — and to the point of this story. The leading families had fallen out over a difference of approach. Of management, if you will. At the end of what they call here the Second Gigantine War — you have heard of that?"
"Yes." "The king and queen of Faerie — not quite Shakespeare's Oberon and Titania, as I have discovered since, but definitely the rulers of this place — had died at the end of that war. Somehow, by means I have never been able to discover, the Seven Families gained control over the channeling of power that had once been a part of the king's and queen's duties . . . no, duties is the wrong word . . . that had once been a part of the king's and queen's very essences. The Seven put themselves in the place of the king and queen, and not incidentally gained power over the lives of all who had been royal subjects — in short, all of Faerie.
"But, and here is the significant part, they might have gained control of the conduit — the pipeline, as it were — but they couldn't insure the continued flow of power, of magic, of whatever you wish to call it that is the lifeblood of this place. Somehow the magic of Faerie had been either controlled by, or even generated by the old king and queen, and the Seven Families could not make things work in the same way. They were forced to find cruder substitutes. Instead of tapping a self-renewing source they were forced to use the actual energies of living fairies. A bit like eating your friends instead of eating fruits and vegetables that need only water and sun to grow, I suppose. Certainly it was not very efficient. Also, to their dismay, the leaders of the Seven Families soon discovered that the human-type fairies themselves act as concentrators of the kind of power they need in a way that other people of Faerie do not . . ."
"A friend of mine explained that to me." "Yes, well, it is a significant fact. The ruthlessness of the families in question is such that if they could have used those they deemed 'lesser races' of Faerie, this crisis could have been averted for thousands of years more, perhaps forever.
I have seen the plans commissioned by Hellebore and his allies, curious antiques now, for self-contained power stations that would have bred their own goblins and kobolds, used them up, then essentially thrown them away, like the Nazi camps. But they could not make such a thing work. The cost of use was and still is too high — as much power is expended extracting the essence of one of that kind of fairy as is gained. Even taking power from the 'higher fairies,' so-called, is a bad bargain, although that is what they have been doing for years. And even if it were a better bargain in terms of energy generated, the morality of it has always troubled many folk here.
"That had already become clear on that night, as I stood before Lord Violet. He alone, apparently, had found the courage to stand before the other families and say that he could no longer countenance living off what was essentially the slavery of other fairies. He might have felt differently if the strategy had been an effective one, but it was clearly only a delaying action against inevitable collapse. You see, a fairy city is similar to a human city in at least one important respect. It is an unnatural thing, and the more unnatural a thing is — in this case, a concentration of people in one place, using countless labor-saving devices and altering the very land to cram ever more people in — the more energy it uses. New Erewhon is a kind of reverse solar system, with the City becoming a sun that does not give light and heat to that which surrounds it, but draws it away from everything else.
"In any case, back on that long-ago day, Violet had made his stand and had failed. Things still seemed normal on the surface — very few people on the street would have guessed that another Flower War was about to begin — but Belleius Violet was no fool. He had not swayed the other ruling families to his side, and since he had angered Hellebore and his faction by challenging them in public they would certainly seek revenge. Lord Violet knew he did not have enough powerful allies to win, and he knew that Hellebore would not be content merely to push Violet House out of the inner circle of power. It would be destroyed, its ruling family devastated, perhaps even exterminated."
"Like Daffodil House this time." "Exactly. Now, something else you must understand about Faerie is that its rules may be strange, but they work. I have had thirty years to study this place and I have learned a great deal. I still cannot tell you exactly what Faerie is, whether it is a place in its own right or a sort of reflection of the mortal world, but although its rules may be incomprehensible to our way of thinking, they are just as valid as any physics you may have learned back home. If you swear an oath here then you had better fulfill it or you will definitely reap the consequences and they will be unpleasant in some particularly apt way. If you go to a crossroads at midnight, you will meet someone who will offer you a bargain, even if it's only a barrow-troll who's willing to let you have a two-step head start before he catches you and eats the flesh off your bones."
Theo's fear had begun to ebb a little, although he was by no means feeling comfortable. "Does this have something to do with Lord Violet?"
"It does. Don't hurry me. Faerie has its rules and they may seem magical — they are magical, or at least so different as to seem so — but they work. One of them is primogeniture. Do you know what that means? No? Good God, boy. It means that the firstborn inherits, or in some cases, the oldest living child. And I'm not just talking about land or the family limousine. I mean everything — all the powers, contracts, charms, and obligations that the head of the family, usually the father, has accumulated during his long, long life. This is one reason that even a progressive like Violet hated me for marrying into a fairy family, and why he was so particularly galled to have to ask for my help. As far as they were concerned, letting mortals into the bloodline of the high houses was more than a social issue, it meant a possible end to one of the most important truths of life in Faerie — namely, that as long as one child survives, the family still exists and can be reconstituted, in a sense, no matter how low they have fallen. The games of power between houses are played over millennia here, Theo, and they are very complicated.
"So this was the situation in which Violet found himself. He faced a war he almost certainly could not win, and in which he feared that not only he might die, but his sons and daughters as well, thus ending his family. Nidrus Hellebore of all people understands that you have not destroyed an enemy until you have destroyed his issue as well — 'It is not enough to kill the bloom,' an old expression here goes, 'you must burn the seeds and salt the ground.' And that is what Violet feared would happen. His wife had given birth to a son only a few months earlier, an infant who would normally have had nothing more unusual to look forward to than the life of a seventh child in a powerful family, but now he might be the seed that could let the family live again, no matter the outcome of the next Flower War. Violet wanted to send that child somewhere beyond Hellebore's reach, but there was nowhere in Faerie he could feel confident that would be true. So he had thought of a Faerie tradition from the old days. He would send the child to the mortal world."
An overwhelming idea was knocking like an impatient stranger at the door, but Theo held it at bay for a moment to grapple with something in Dowd's story that was confusing him. "But why send a baby? Why not send one of his older children — someone who would be able to do the family some good if they wound up as the last one?"
"Because although travel to the mortal world has been curtailed by the Clover Effect, it is still possible. Violet knew that if Hellebore ever learned what had happened, or even guessed, he would begin to search the mortal world. One of the other strange things about the overlap between the mortal world and Faerie is that a fairy child raised in the mortal world very quickly begins to resemble a mortal — to smell like a mortal, as it were — while an older child or adult will never fully lose the scent of Faerie. Trained hunters would find it much easier to locate one of Violet's older children."
"So he wanted you to take . . . take this child to the mortal world." "Well, not precisely — I was going to be banished in public. Violet's plan would not be much of a secret if I was seen to cross back into the human world with an infant in my arms. But in desperation he had gone to the Remover with this problem and that cunning old monstrosity had seen a way to kill two birds with one stone — or rather, to swap birds. The Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles was going to take Lord and Lady Violet's youngest child and pass that child to me once I was back on the mortal side. I was then to take it and keep it, or so Violet intended, and he promised me that if he survived to recover his child — since that would mean he had somewhat improbably triumphed over Hellebore's faction — he would work to revoke my banishment and find a way to bring me back to Faerie. Not a very good bargain for me, he must have thought, but it must have seemed that as a beggar I could not afford to be too choosy.
"What he did not know of course was that the Remover was manipulating everything, most definitely including me, and that I fully intended to return without any help from the obviously doomed Violet House. The Remover had foreseen my ethical dilemma — you know, it makes me wonder if like me, he had once been a mortal — and was providing me with a sop to my conscience. I would take a mortal child from its parents, but now I would have a healthy fairy child to leave in its place. One of the oldest of fairy tales, that is — the changeling child, substituted in the cradle. So I agreed to Violet's bargain, thinking that Violet House's plans would mean little to me — that I would be coming back to Faerie on my own and that the Violet family would never survive to want to claim their offspring. I was right, of course, but not in the ways that I thought that night."
"And that baby, the fairy child . . . that was me." There was a long pause. "Yes, Theo. That was you. For what it is worth at this late date, I can confirm that you were born Septimus Violet and that everything your father feared came to pass. You are the last living member of Violet House."
37 THE EBONY BOX
"Septimus? I was named Septimus?" "Not exactly," said Dowd. "You and I seem to perceive first names here as Classical n
ames, mostly Roman — at least among the upper-class fairy families. Septimus is Latin for 'Seventh,' which is what you were called."
"Jesus, that's even worse. I was called 'Number Seven'? They didn't even bother to think up a name for me?" "They may not have used much imagination in naming you, Theo,"— the whispery voice was as close to kind as it had been — "but your brothers and sisters were all killed in the Flower War, so they gave you something better than a clever name. They gave you a life."
"So that's how I wound up with my mom and dad? You stole your own niece's baby and left me in his place!"
Dowd took a rattling breath. "If it means anything, I am sorry now for all that I did. More sorry than you can guess." "Just tell me what happened. No, tell me about my real family." He was finding it hard to absorb all that he had learned. To discover that the greatuncle he had thought was dead was alive — a man he had only recently learned wasn't really his great-uncle, after all — would have been strange enough. But to learn of his true family and find that they were all dead at the same time . . . Theo felt as though he had a fever: his head seemed to be floating, but the messages coming through from his body were of illness and discomfort. He turned to look at Cumber and felt a sudden powerful dislike for his unconscious friend, for all the creatures of this world that a month ago he had not believed existed, but which had nevertheless turned his entire life upside-down.