Silver Ravens

by Jane Fletcher

  And as an encore she dances the cancan on water.

  “You’ll understand when you meet her. Working for her is a privilege. But don’t worry. She’s also very generous. If you decode the document for her, you can expect to be well rewarded.”

  In dollar bills stamped Bank of Fairyland, no doubt.

  “There are mountains of gold in Annwyn. It’s as common as sand is on Earth.”

  In which case a sackful or two is hardly a noteworthy act of generosity. However, it was clear that Tamsin was besotted with her fairy queen. Was it an indication she might not be totally straight? No. Don’t go there. I want safe—okay, Adam, maybe dull and boring, but safe. Tamsin was not safe. How long before the cultists’ absurd fantasy ran out of steam?

  “Why does Queen Rianna need human soldiers? Can’t she magically turn ants into an army?”

  “Iron. It’s deadly to all Annwyn life. The slightest scratch can kill. Rulers of Annwyn have recruited human soldiers for generations. We maintain the rule of law and stop criminals from seizing power. When the queen’s older sister went insane, we helped Queen Rianna restore peace to Annwyn.”

  So who’s protecting whom? To take Tamsin’s story at face value, the Silver Ravens were mercenaries employed by a usurper who had overthrown her own sister. “The six of you keep the peace for the entire kingdom? Or are there more of you back in Annwyn?”

  “There’s just six Silver Ravens. The Iron Ravens form the majority of Queen Rianna’s army.”

  Hence you’re the elite special forces.

  “We’re approaching the border, Captain,” Hippo called out.

  “Thanks.” Tamsin stood, bracing one hand against a crate for balance, and drew her pistol.

  “What are you doing?” Lori’s voice came out as a squeak.

  “Just a precaution. Slua have been active lately, and they’ve taken to hanging around the border. Nine times out of ten you don’t get a whiff of them, but it pays to be ready.” Tamsin held her pistol up as she scanned the encircling fog.

  She’s crazy. Utterly, stark raving, wear underpants on your head, crazy. Lori slid onto the floor of the wagon and pressed herself into a corner, trying to present as small a target as possible. It would be no protection if Tamsin aimed at her, but it reduced the risk of being shot by accident.

  “Shit,” Tamsin swore under her breath. “This ain’t one of those times.” She raised her voice. “D’you see them, Hippo?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  The blast of the shotgun split the air like thunder, so loud it hurt. Too late, Lori pressed her hands over her ears. Who the fuck was Hippo shooting at? Tamsin also took aim at something. Whatever her target, it gave no reaction to being shot at. No shouts or screams, and blessedly, no return fire. Was there anything out there, or were they battling drug-inspired hallucinations? And did she want the answer badly enough to risk peeking over the side? The wagon came to a halt and a second pistol began firing. Finn had joined in.

  Tamsin towered over her, feet planted square on the deck, an image clad in black and white. Her pose was that of a hero in an action movie, making no attempt to take cover. Was it still possible she was an actress? That this was a stunt? Could they go for a coffee afterwards?

  A dark shape flitted overhead, gone before Lori got a clear look. That was it? Were they shooting at birds? She scrambled to her knees for a better view.

  They were not birds.

  Lori had no idea what the flying creatures were, but they most certainly were not birds.

  A flock swooped around the wagon. She had misjudged the size on her fleeting glimpse, assuming the black shape nearer than it was. The creatures were as large as a human, with batlike wings fanning out in place of arms. They were skeletally thin, shaped like the outline of shrouded, black, flying corpses.

  One plunged straight at the wagon. Caught between horror and shock, Lori was riveted to the spot. The creature was devoid of detail. It was a hole in the sky, rushing in to swallow her. She had to duck out of its way, but could not move.

  The blast of a pistol. The hole twisted around on itself and vanished. In a daze, Lori watched Tamsin focus on her next target and fire again. Her shots were punctuated by the roar of the shotgun. Suddenly, the shapes clustered in a tight group and vanished into the fog.

  Tamsin lowered her gun. “That’s it. They’re going.”

  “Nasty little buggers,” Finn spat.

  “You can say that again.” Tamsin returned her pistol to its holster. “They’re breeding again. I’ll sort out a hunting party once we get to Caersiddi.”

  “Oh, goody,” Hippo said cheerfully.

  Lori remained frozen on her knees. What had just happened? She was hallucinating. She had to be. They had slipped something in her beer at the pub, or maybe was she having a nightmare.

  Tamsin put a hand under her armpit and urged her back onto the bench. “Are you all right?”

  “What were they?”

  “Slua.”

  “And what the hell are slua?”

  “What Finn said—nasty little buggers.” Tamsin was grinning. “They exist in the space between the worlds. In ones and twos, they keep out of the way. But when their numbers go up, they start making trouble. As for what they are…” She shrugged. “Who knows? But they vanish when you shoot them, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “But…” Lori buried her face in her hands. Somebody was crazy, and she had to accept the possibility that the somebody might be herself.

  Tamsin patted her shoulder. “It’s okay. You’ll get used to it.”

  The wagon lurched forward. Lori raised her head. After travelling in their private pocket of sunlight for so long, they were finally about to enter the fog. Rolling mist flowed into the wagon, and then the cloud wall engulfed them, deadening the sound of wheels and the clop of horses’ hooves. Tamsin became a dim shadow on the seat opposite.

  Lori had read that, despite the way they seem, dreams only lasted a short while—ninety seconds or so. The time for this one to end was long past. Yet, stubbornly, the dream kept going. Now. I need to wake up now.

  Sounds sharpened as the light returned. A few more yards and the grey wall parted.

  The wagon trundled down a gentle, grassy slope, between two rows of standing stones. Overhead, white puffy clouds drifted across the bluest sky Lori had ever seen. A range of snow-capped mountains lined the horizon on either side. Directly ahead, the grassland rolled on until it met silver waters, sparkling in the sunlight. Was it a lake, or the sea? She could not see the opposite shore.

  A knot of guards stood nearby. They were dressed in a similar fashion to Tamsin and the others, with the addition of a silver breastplate, chain mail sporran, and Roman style helmet. The armour was bizarrely incongruous with the automatic rifles they all carried. One had an ornate crest on his helmet, which presumably made him an officer. He hailed Tamsin with an informal salute, then waved the wagon by. The dogs padded on behind.

  Lori looked back. Billowing fog was still framed between the two standing stones at the top of the avenue. Beyond them, the grassland gave way to a wood. Nowhere was there a hint of houses, farms, hedgerows, or roads.

  Tamsin tapped her knee and pointed. “There. See on the promontory overlooking the sea, about two miles away. That’s Caersiddi.”

  The castle looked as if it had grown, rather than been built. The collection of towers and battlements was constructed from the same white rock it stood on, carrying an unbroken upwards sweep from the waves. She was certain it had never appeared in any tourist guide to the historic sights of England.

  Lori swallowed. “I guess we’re not in Dorset any more.”

  * * *

  The wagon continued its approach along the shoreline. On closer viewing, the castle had to be real. If Caersiddi was a product of her imagination, then Lori disowned her subconscious—being drugged or dreaming was no excuse. Even Ludwig II of Bavaria would have dismissed the plans as preposterous. Had the builder never heard of
gravity? A child might fall for such a storybook fantasy, but one hit from a trebuchet and the elegant towers would be a heap of rubble.

  The castle stood atop a promontory, overlooking the sea. At its highest point, the cliff easily soared two hundred feet above the waves. Battlements and buildings formed tiers like a wedding cake, with an ethereal, fairytale keep cresting the peak. Brightly coloured banners fluttered from too many turrets to count.

  On the landward approach, the lowest ring of fortifications formed a curtain around the base of the headland. At either end, graceful buttresses emerged from the water. Everything was built from polished marble, all the more startling in contrast with the blood-red tiles on the pointed roofs. The white stone sparkled in the light of the setting sun.

  Lori did a mental double take. Setting? “Is it evening already?” Surely they had not been on the road that long.

  Tamsin smiled. “It is here. And back in Dorstanley, it’ll be the second nightfall after you did your trot around Hobs Geat.”

  “What?”

  “Time doesn’t flow at the same rate between the two worlds. A month passes on Earth in the space of a day on Annwyn. You can leave Caersiddi after breakfast, spend a week on Earth, and still be home in time for dinner. Widget can take as long as he needs sending emails, arranging postcards from abroad, moving your car, stuff like that, and still only be half a day behind us getting back.”

  “That’s…” Impossible? She might be drugged and hallucinating—it would be the easiest explanation—but she could no longer ignore the possibility that everything Tamsin told her was true.

  “The flipside is you can’t spend much time in Annwyn if you want to go back to the Earth you knew. Like in my own case. I was born during the Civil War—”

  “The American Civil War?”

  “No. The English one.”

  “That was over three hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “Yup.” Tamsin’s grin broadened. “Are you going to tell me I’m aging well?”

  “I, umm…” Far and away, the best looking tri-centenarian Lori had ever seen. There were not many thirty-five-year-olds who came close either. Lori looked away. Maybe Tamsin was not utterly bat-shit crazy, but she was still a kidnapper, and she was still dangerous. The Stockholm Syndrome was a trap—armed, baited, and ready for her.

  “I’d look even younger if I hadn’t been splitting time between here and Earth, setting up investments.”

  “Investments?”

  “For when I retire. I can’t be a soldier forever. Queen Rianna has let me spend enough time on Earth to arrange things. The crackdown on money laundering makes gold a little tricky to dispose of. But I’ve got front companies in my name, and a couple of California gold mines that had supposedly run dry. I bought them and suddenly they’re churning out gold by the barrelful. It works as far as the IRS and FBI are concerned. We can help you sort out what to do with your reward from the queen when you return to Earth.”

  Tamsin had said when, not if, which was encouraging, but how long would it be? In six fairy-months, fifteen years would elapse on Earth, and the task might easily take her that much time. Even if she got home with a wagonload of gold, how could she explain her absence? Welcome to Fairyland.

  “This is the source of those folktales, isn’t it? Thomas the Rhymer, Rip Van Winkle. It’s based on people who’ve been to Annwyn and returned.”

  “In part. Some is just people making stuff up. I mean, there’s dragons, hellhounds, boggarts, things like that. But no unicorns.”

  A shame. As a child, Lori had wanted a pet unicorn. Her first real disillusionment with travel had come from learning there was nowhere she could go to find one.

  Her childhood had been a sequence of huge, snowy mountains, more miles of dry desert, ever denser forests full of insects she was not allowed to touch, different piles of falling down walls that were even older than Grandma. What was the point? No matter how far you went, you were still limited to what was already there. The very first video game Lori worked on, she had insisted on unicorns.

  Mum and Dad could not understand why she did not want to travel. They had shown her the world and she was not interested. At first, Dad called it teenage rebelliousness—which he would have approved of, had it taken any other outlet. Mum felt it more personally, as rejection and criticism. It was not, of course. It was all far more complicated. Would she get another chance to explain it to them?

  “Are you okay?” Tamsin must have seen her expression waver.

  “I was thinking about my parents. We haven’t met up for nearly a year. They’ve been abroad. I’m wondering if I’ll ever see them again.”

  “Ah, yes. That. Sorry.” Tamsin sounded genuinely apologetic. “Are your parents old?”

  “Mid fifties.”

  “Hopefully, the decoding won’t take you long. You should be back before they’re claiming their pensions.”

  And on the other hand, she might not.

  The shadow of the gatehouse fell over them as the wagon reached the castle. The silver teeth of a portcullis hung overhead. The ornate metalwork was clearly designed for show rather than defence. As in every other architectural detail, Caersiddi was too pretty to be taken seriously.

  Guards with silver breastplates and helmets stood on either side, looking suitably medieval, apart from their machine guns. They saluted as the wagon rolled past. Lori looked back over the route they had come. The sun was dropping, stretching the shadows. A first thickening of dusk gathered under the distant trees. The framed patch of fog where they had arrived was now just a blur on the hillside, but still in comfortable walking distance.

  If she got the chance to escape, should she take it? The grassland offered little in the way of cover, so getting by the guards unseen would not be easy. Maybe she could sneak past at night. But then there were the slua. Lori closed her eyes, trying to block out the memory. No—the journey was far too dangerous to attempt without an armed escort.

  She was a captive in fairyland. Mum and Dad would be so jealous.

  Chapter Six

  Finn brought the wagon to a halt just inside the gates. The large outer bailey of the castle was markedly less pretty and more practical than might be expected from the ethereal fantasy of the exterior. This was evidently where the unromantic, day to day army life took place. The walls were lined with stores, stables, and workshops. One corner had rows of low buildings that were possibly barracks.

  Soldiers on the drill ground looked to be winding down their exercises for the day and the nearby target ranges stood empty. However, the clang of metal and rush of bellows still resounded from an open fronted smithy, and the chimney of a large, double-barrel roofed building was venting a thick column of smoke.

  Several people nearby were without breastplate and helmet. Lori saw that, like the Silver Ravens, all wore iron torcs, but not the distinctive belt buckles at their waist. Evidently, these were Iron Ravens, ordinary grunts not up to hazardous covert missions such as kidnapping unarmed computer programmers.

  As yet, the terrain was mainly flat, rising slightly toward the next ring of battlements. A well-worn path cut a straight line through the military encampment to another gatehouse, even more ornate than the first. The ground was hard packed dirt, scored with ruts and hoof prints. A few trampled blades of grass were the only greenery.

  Lori’s gaze travelled on. The castle rose above her tier upon tier, wall behind wall, with the impossible fairytale keep hanging over it all, a silhouette against the sunset. The last rays of daylight hit the tops of the turrets, burnishing the red tiles. Lanterns appeared in the deepening shadows.

  Tamsin swung herself over the side of the wagon. “I’ll be back in a minute. Wait here with Hippo.” She disappeared through a doorway on the inside of the gatehouse, with Finn following close on her heels.

  Hippo came around to the back and slipped a bolt, letting the tailboard drop. “Do you want a hand down?” He offered his arm.

  “I can manage.” She was
not a delicate maiden, at risk of fainting.

  In some strange way, having her feet on the ground, made it all seem more real. Now that she no longer had the protective sides of the wagon around her, some part of her mind finally gave up on the pretence that she was on a ride at a theme park. She put her hands in the pockets of her raincoat and tried to act calm. Whistling would be overdoing it.

  A woman wearing huge leather gauntlets led away the red-eyed mastiffs.

  “Why did you have the dogs along?” Lori asked.

  “To scare off the grey reivers.” Hippo sounded cheerfully unconcerned.

  “Are they like the slua?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do I want to know about them?”

  “Nope.”

  “But it’ll be safe for Widget and the others without them?”

  “They’ll be on horseback, without the wagon. They can outrun the reivers easily.”

  So all she had to do was steal a fast horse and get it past the guards without being seen. Thoughts of returning to Earth on her own took a further step back.

  Three small figures came out of nowhere and rushed towards her. Children? Here? Instantly, surprise switched to shock. She was mistaken. They were not children. They were not human. Lori stumbled out of their way, almost falling. However, the creatures ignored her and leapt into the wagon.

  They were short, four feet tall at most, and scrawny, all arms, legs, knees, and elbows. Their skin was dull, mottled green. Sparse ringlets of dull brown hair were plastered to their heads. Ragged clothes flapped around their limbs. One leered down at her from the wagon and gibbered something. Its face was too wide and too flat. Its eyes were slits, and its nose a blob. Its mouth was filled with teeth, pointed like needles.