“Yes, sorry about the bad welcome, Rasha was a bit of a shock.”
“I’m not sure your dad is going to get used to him any time soon,” Brianna said, with a shrug. “How’s he doing?”
Bill sagged. “He’s not himself at all. I’m not sure what to do about it or if he’ll ever recover.”
“It’s hard for a strong man to feel powerless,” Brianna said. “He’ll recover, in time, once he gets back to doing what he’s best at.”
“But that’s making charcoal and he won’t go near the clamps, says his heart’s not in it anymore.”
Brianna put her hand on Bill’s arm. “Give him time. His strength will return. Now, let’s have a look at this box of yours.”
“Bloody hell, I’d forgotten all about it!” he said, before handing it to her.
With a scream, Brianna fell backwards, the silver box sliding innocently away.
Bill sighed as Brianna’s eyes opened. She was still on the floor, where she’d come to rest ten minutes before, the palm and fingers of her left hand covered in ugly red wheals. Rasher was kneeling beside her holding her other hand and softly weeping, while Blackjack hovered in the background.
“Ow,” Brianna muttered.
“Thank the gods,” Bill said, “I thought it had killed you.”
He looked across at the silver box that lay against a wall. It was giving off an air of innocence that would have impressed the most skilled of politicians. An implied what? hung in the air above it wearing an indignant expression.
Brianna sat up, then grimaced as she held her hand up to her face. “I guess I’m not supposed to open it, then.”
“It’s odd that it didn’t harm me, though,” said Bill.
“That’s because you are supposed to open it, idiot!”
He got up, went over to the silver box and, despite Blackjack’s protestations, carefully pressed a finger to its surface. Nothing happened.
When he’d returned to sit on the floor beside her, he turned it over and over in his hands, looking for some way to open it. There were no markings on it, nor any seam that he could make out. It looked like a slab of silver, but seemed too light to be solid. Bill gave it a shake and was rewarded with the sound of shuffling from inside. If he was forced to take a guess, he’d bet the box contained parchments.
“S’obvious, isn’t it?” said Blackjack. “The old wizard made it for himself to use. He’d know the magic spell to open it but if anyone else touched it, they’d get burnt like Brianna here.”
“If that’s right, how come it didn’t burn me?”
“Because you’re the wizard now, boy,” Blackjack said, his face full of sadness.
Chapter 2
Chortley Fitzmichael was angry. As saviour of the world he had expected a little credit, maybe even a pat on the back, from his father. After all, Chortley’s brave stand with the garrison of Crapplecreek had resulted in the destruction of the Faerie King so that, when Walter Fitzmichael had arrived at the head of the Fitzmichael army, the battle was already won.
Maybe that was the problem. Anyone who knew anything about how the battle had actually progressed would have identified Chortley as the hero. His brother wouldn’t figure in official accounts because he was of common birth and therefore non-existent, but Chortley, as the son (albeit illegitimate) of the regional liege lord, would loom tall in any accurate telling of the tale. In time, the narrative would be adapted to give Count Walter the leading role, perhaps riding at the head of a glorious cavalry charge coming to the rescue of his incompetent son. But, for now at least, those who were there knew that, in fact, Walter had watched from behind the lines as his troops cut down an already routed enemy. This meant that Chortley’s stock had risen, as Walter’s had declined; undermining both the count’s authority and the suitability of his chosen successor, Aggrapella.
Yes, that was it. The last thing Walter would do now was publicly praise his son or reward him in any way. Instead, he’d charged Chortley with the problem of dealing with the remnants of the faerie army, currently enjoying the hospitality of the Crapplecreek dungeons. Walter’s suggestion had been that they be marched into the wilderness to encounter an “accident” (or, indeed, 224 accidents) - perhaps to fall into the lava pits of Mount Mood. But this didn’t sit well with Chortley - he didn’t mind a spot of cruelty from time to time, but he’d recently discovered he wasn’t callous by nature. And it would provide an open goal to his father if the old man decided to “accidentally” reveal the “accident” to a horrified public. Devious bastard.
The lesser of two evils, then, was to find some way to deal with the goblins and the handful of faerie captains he’d captured that removed the threat they posed without simply murdering them. So it was that he found himself on the road to Upper Bottom to seek the wisdom of Mother Hemlock. He found himself also hoping that wisdom was all he’d get from her - she had a fearsome reputation and he’d seen for himself what she could do with water. He only hoped that a tenuous family connection might keep him safe.
“Take your boots off, lad,” Mother Hemlock said as Chortley stooped under the lintel of the front door. “I’ve just given the floor a good scrubbin’ and I’d like it to see the day out clean.”
She led him through to the parlour and pointed to an arm-chair. “Sit yourself down there.”
She looked him up and down as if assessing whether the chair could take his weight, “I was expecting to see you sooner or later, I hear you have a goblin problem.”
“Thank you, Mistress Hemlock,” Chortley responded. He could feel that this woman had power though he couldn’t say why. It was as if she was more dense than the ordinary matter in the room: there was too much of her for the space she occupied.
“I’m gen’rally known as Mother Hemlock, and, from what I’ve heard about you, my lad, you could do with some proper parenting.” Jessie fixed Chortley with a stare that seared his brain.
Chortley pushed his anger back and forced himself to be polite. “I’m here to discuss my, as you put it, ‘goblin problem’, not my parentage,” he said, before adding, “thank you.”
Mother Hemlock smiled. “Perhaps there is hope for you yet, I sense your anger and yet you control it. Good. Maybe you inherited more than just capriciousness from your half-faerie mother.”
“Can we please talk about the soldiers I have locked up in the gaol at Crapplecreek?” Chortley sighed.
“Very well. Tell me about them.”
Chortley settled back into the chair and gathered his thoughts. “There are 224 at latest count. Of those, 12 are faerie, the rest goblin-folk. I’ve still got groups out looking for more, but we’ve not found any for a week so I think we’ve probably got them all now.”
Mother Hemlock shook her head. “I reckon the boreds3 will be chanting stories of cave goblins found in the deep woods for many a year. But let’s deal with the ones we have got first, then worry about the stragglers. What do you know about them?”
“What do you mean? I know they’re the enemy; I know they’re dangerous. That’s about it.”
“Well lad,” Mother Hemlock said, “you’ve just described every prisoner from a common bandit to Yessie Khan4. If you want to know how to handle them best, you needs to understand them, and not just from the pointy end of a spear. Luckily for you, I got to know ‘em pretty well the last time they invaded.”
Chortley smiled, “Good, because the goblins are repulsive and don’t use the common speech, and as for their captains,” he paused, picturing his most recent encounter, “every time I have to talk to one, I feel an overwhelming desire to rearrange their smug features for them.”
“Yes, they can be infuriating, but then the same could be said of many humans. ‘Specially the nobs, I find. Some of them are hard to tolerate.” Mother Hemlock folded her arms in a silent challenge.
To his surprise, Chortley found himself enjoying this. He hadn’t had a verbal spar with such a worthy opponent in, well, ever. People who had a problem with him tended t
o either keep their trap shut (if they were wise) or go on about it endlessly (if they were family).
“Me too,” he said, with a smile, “but how does that help me decide how to deal with them?”
“It’s pretty simple, really. They’re not from our world, so they has to go back.”
For a moment, Chortley thought he must have misheard. But no, she’d actually said it. Was she stupid?
“Didn’t you know the portal was destroyed?” he asked. “Or are you suggesting we rebuild it? Because, if you are, then it isn’t going to happen - the last thing we need is having that door opened in our back garden again.”
Mother Hemlock snorted. “Of course I know it’s destroyed, I was there, you lummox.”
The witch settled back and took a dramatic sip of tea as she approached her point with relish. “No, whether or not our portal can be rebuilt, now is not the time. But, lad,” she said, as, right on cue, a cloud passed over the sun outside, darkening the room so her face was hidden in the half-light, “it ain’t the only one, you just has to use another.”
#
Rasha the goblin had hardly taken his eyes off Bill since Brianna had fallen asleep in a hastily put together bed under the fragment of remaining roof. Strike had barely moved in the hours since. He sat, turning the silver box over and over in his hands.
“What are you looking at?” he said, startling the creature so that it backed into the corner with Brianna’s inert form.
“I’m sorry,” Bill said, more gently this time. “It’s not your fault I can’t get into this damned box.” Bill dropped it on the stone floor in front of him, watching it flip over and come to a rest a few feet away.
The goblin looked at the box, then looked at Bill. He did it again.
“Now, don’t you start gettin’ ideas,” Bill said, edging his foot towards where the box lay.
Rasha shook his head and then, quite deliberately, he pointed at the box, pointed at Bill and then mimed something, his hands moving outwards in opposite arcs.
“What are you trying to tell me?” Bill a sked. “I know I should be able to open it but I don’t know how.”
The goblin repeated the movement, but this time he pointed to his own hands, then to Bill’s, before moving his hands.
The penny dropped. “Oh, you think I should use flame to open it?”
Rasha beamed and nodded with gusto.
“But, how do you know about my power?”
The little goblin looked sheepish, if that were possible for something with pointed teeth and green eyes, and gestured towards Brianna.
“Oh, she told you about me, did she?” Bill said, then, after another moment’s thought: “Wait a minute, d’you mean you understand every word we say?”
Another nod.
Bill stepped forward and retrieved the box. “So, we assumed you couldn’t understand us because you couldn’t speak? That wasn’t very clever.”
Two more nods.
“There’s more to it than that,” Brianna said, yawning, “the little bugger very definitely pretended not to understand what I was saying to him on the way here. Especially when that involved having a wash in the river.”
Rasha backed away from Brianna and Bill, quietly shaking.
“Oh, it’s alright. We’re not going to hurt you,” Brianna said.
“We’re not? The little bugger’s deceived you all along. And...and…” Bill sputtered.
Brianna scowled. “And he’s a goblin, is that what you’re saying?”
“Well, he is acting true to form, after all.” snapped Bill.
“Except,” Brianna said, the word echoing around the ruined cottage, “he’s right about your silver box. Flame will open it, I’m sure.”
Bill fished the box out again. “Flame might open the box, but it might also incinerate whatever’s inside.”
“Don’t be stupid; Vokes was a fire wizard, and it makes perfect sense he’d have the box unlock only through his power. There’s only ever one fire elemental at a time, after all, so that way he made sure that he’d be the only one who could open it. Him or his successor. Give it a try,” Brianna said, although Bill noticed her moving back against the wall, presumably to be as far away from his hands as possible.
“It’s alright,” Bill said, annoyed, “I can control them better now.”
Brianna shrugged, and didn’t move an inch. “Go on then, show me how good you are, fire mage.”
Bill ignored her sarcasm, and decided. There was no other way to get the box open and it made sense that it would require his particular power to open it. What did he have to lose? If he incinerated the contents, he’d know no less than he did right now.
He began to harness the heat and was just reaching down to put the box back on the floor, as far from anyone as possible when he felt it open.
Night had arrived and rain fell outside but, within the four walls of Strike Cottage, it was warm and dry. And cramped. Even as he’d been growing up, Bill had felt that the cottage in the depths of the coppice woods was barely big enough for himself and his father to both occupy at once. Tonight, four were squeezed into the tiny sitting room, each craning to get a view of the silver box, now lying open on the floor.
Blackjack had suggested they abandon Vokes’s cottage for the night. Magic or no, he’d said, paper gets wet, and those documents were likely to be important.
The bulk of the space was taken up by a bundle of parchments all wrapped up into a roll and tied together. When Bill undid the string binding them, they expanded into a neat pile on the floor. Bill read the title of the top page, “The history of the Magic Staffe,” written in the wizard’s unmistakably untidy scrawl. Beneath, it said, “Being the researches of Nomenclature Vokes, Fire Mage, aided by the wisdom of many.”
“Where are you reading that?” asked Brianna, squinting in the firelight. “There’s nothing there, it’s just blank parchment.”
Bill looked again, “It’s written as plain as my hand. Can you see it dad?”
“No son. As I told you, you’re the wizard now. It’s up to you to work out whether what’s written on that there parchment was worth the effort or just a load of old garblings.”
It was plain, from his tone, which of the two Blackjack thought the more likely.
“We’d better let you have some room,” Brianna said, moving out of the light, “Rasha and I will go and sit in the shed.”
Bill looked up from the parchment, “There’s no need for that - take my room. That’s alright isn’t it dad?”
“Of course, young Brianna is welcome to stay in the house,” he said.
“But he’s not,” she snapped, pointing down at where Rasha stood, shivering, “and I’m not sending him outside to sleep on his own.”
The door slammed behind her and Bill flung a scowl at his father, who was sitting and deliberately looking at the fire.
“Don’t go starin’ at me, boy,” he mumbled, “I ain’t having that thing under my roof, I don’t trust his kind and neither should you.”
Bill turned back to his pile of paper. “You might not trust him, but you should have faith in Brianna. She wouldn’t do anything to put us in danger.”
“Maybe. Or maybe she’s gone a bit soft in the head. He fooled her into thinkin’ he didn’t understand nothin’, he can trick her again,” Blackjack paused for a moment, before finishing his thought, “and I ain’t being made a fool of, not even for her sake.”
Bill’s eyes moved across the parchment but he wasn’t reading it. His father was right, Rasha had proven himself false, and yet it had been his insight that had led to Bill opening the box. And who knew what was going on in the mind of Blackjack Strike after what had happened to him at the hands of the Faerie King’s servants?
They said nothing as Bill resumed his examination of the papers. Blackjack was, no doubt, lost in his thoughts and, Bill suspected, wrestling with guilt. The younger Strike, on the other hand, soon forgot all about his father as he read. It was an odd sensation, as i
f he could almost hear the voice of Vokes, the words going straight into his mind without bothering to ask permission of his eyes.
Bill lost all sense of time as he sat there, his only clue being the slowly fading light from the fire and the gentle snoring of his father in the chair beside him.
He was awoken by the sound of the door being pushed open, cold air flowing over his face. He looked up at Brianna from his position, half on his side, half on his back, the parchments forming a crude pillow.
“Have you learnt anything?” Brianna asked, not looking at Blackjack, who was stirring.
Bill nodded. “Yes, and it’s all bad, very very bad.”
Chapter 3
“Ah, here he is at last,” said an effete voice as Humunculus entered the room. Seated in comfortable chairs around the walls were the spectral figures of six men and one woman.
A man in a ridiculous wig waved the Faerie King over and Humunculus allowed his mind to pretend that he was walking across a real room towards the pansy in the corner.
“Lazul has told us so much about you,” the wig-man said, rising effortlessly from his insubstantial chair, “I am Sir Henry Featheringay-Fortescue, formerly the First Lord of Land and Sea for his Majesty Arkwright the Third, the King of the Northerners.”
Sir Henry gave a florid bow before rising again and holding out his hand. “And you, I believe, are a genuine fairie king! How marvellous, you’ll fit right in. Welcome to the Cognitive Club.”
Humunculus nodded, very slightly, and looked around the room. Each chair contained a spectral figure with papers spread on its knees.
“What is this club? It doesn’t look as though much fun is being had.”
To Humunculus, a club was something you attended in order to drink too much ambrosia and dance until other people fell over. Or it was a big lump of wood with a nail in it. What he was looking at here, on the other hand, looked as boring as a drill bit.
“Ah, didn’t Lazul explain?” Sir Henry said, looking behind Humunculus as the swiftly discorporealating Lazul faded from view. “Well, you see, this is the Cognitive Club, it’s where we come to keep ourselves in shape.”
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