Blue stared at him. The desire to laugh had suddenly disappeared.
‘I expect it’s a lost love,’ said the Abbot. ‘With women it’s always a lost love.’
‘It is a lost love,’ the Treasure said crossly. ‘And there’s no need to mock just because you’re too disciplined –’ he lowered his voice and mumbled ’ – or too ugly – ’ the voice raised again ’ – to have a lost love of your own.’ He turned to Blue and said kindly, ‘It is a lost love, isn’t it?’ This little old man was incredible. Blue said, ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘It is interlinked. It is interwoven. It is part of the tapestry of life.’ ‘Everything is part of the tapestry of life,’ the Abbot grumbled. ‘That doesn’t solve our problem.’
‘It is part of the part of life’s tapestry that involves our problem,’ said the Purlisa impatiently. He glared briefly at the Abbot, then turned back to Blue and smiled. ‘What’s your birth name? I expect it’s something more melodious than Sluce Ragetus.’
For a moment Blue considered making up another name, then decided she simply couldn’t lie to the Precious One. ‘Blue,’ she said. ‘It’s Holly Blue.’
The Purlisa looked at the Abbot. ‘Why is that name familiar?’ he asked.
‘It’s the same name as the Realm’s Queen Empress, you old fool,’ the Abbot told him. To Blue he said, ‘You’re not related, by any chance?’
To her surprise, Blue felt herself blush.
The Abbot blinked. ‘You are the Queen Empress?’ Blue nodded.
‘You see, Jamides! A royal soul! Exactly as I predicted!’
The Abbot ignored him and frowned at Blue. ‘But what are you doing in the Buthner desert?’
The Purlisa began to pace and gesture wildly. ‘A royal soul!’ he said again, delightedly. ‘It’s just precisely what I predicted. Admit it, Jamides – go on, admit it!’ He swung round to grin at Blue. ‘It’s what I said, isn’t it? A lost love?’
‘I suppose it is,’ Blue said. ‘A lost love.’
‘You see! You see!’ He actually waved two fists in the air. ‘You must tell us of your lost love,’ he said. ‘Then the Abbot will tell you of our problem. Then it’s entirely possible that I shall tell you how one may form part of the other.’ He pulled out a chair and sat down suddenly, a smug expression on his face. The Abbot promptly took a seat beside him.
‘There’s not much to tell,’ Blue said. ‘My friend Henry-’
‘Your love Henry,’ the Purlisa corrected her.
Blue hesitated, then said, ‘Yes, all right. My love, Henry, has disappeared and I think he may be in the Buthner desert and I came to look for him. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the main thing.’
The Abbot looked up at her sharply. ‘Just a minute. Did you say Henry? That’s a human name.’
Blue said warily, ‘Yes, it is. Henry is a human boy.’
‘You see?’ the Purlisa exclaimed. ‘Human! Didn’t I say human? Now will you take my visions seriously?’
‘I do take them seriously!’ the Abbot hissed. ‘I’ve always taken them seriously. But they’re not always right. And you must admit your last one was so far-fetched –’
Blue suddenly realised she was the only one still standing and sat down. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but Henry may be in danger. Can you help me find him?’
The Purlisa beamed at her. ‘You help us. We’ll help you!’
An acolyte appeared with a tray, which he set down before Blue, then silently withdrew.
The Purlisa pursed his lips and nodded. ‘See?’ he said. ‘A younger monk.’ He smiled triumphantly at Blue. ‘You did not disturb him in the slightest.’
Fifty-Eight
They let her eat in peace (a bowl of cold soup, some wonderfully crumbly bread, a selection of home-made cheeses, sliced meat, fruit and, best of all, a jug of clear, cool water) although they watched every mouthful as if they were starving themselves. When she finished, the Abbot said, ‘There is something we would like you to see.’
From the outside, the monastery was deceptive. When she’d approached, it had appeared to be a single, rambling building. Now she realised it was more like a small community, a village of several buildings, some of which appeared to be dug into the mountainside itself. The structures surrounded a hidden garden, more lush and carefully tended than the agricultural strip Blue had seen as she arrived. They passed a shallow, worn stone basin elevated to shoulder height on a pedestal. Inside it the monks had planted a miniature replica of the garden embellished with a tiny brick-built pagoda.
‘The home of our last Abbot,’ the Purlisa remarked when he noticed her looking at it.
‘A model of his home?’ Blue inquired politely.
‘Oh, no, he lives there now. He has grown very small since he became immortal.’
She was still trying to work it out as they led her from the garden through an archway into one of the structures hewn into the mountainside. The corridor they entered seemed to descend and eventually led to a flight of narrow stone steps, illuminated by flickering torches: no glowglobes here, of course, in this anti-magical country.
‘This portion of the monastery was once a military fortress,’ the Abbot explained. He looked mildly pained, ‘I’m afraid below we will find the dungeons.’
‘Nonetheless,’ the Purlisa chipped in, ‘we must descend. Are you psychic, Queen Holly Blue?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Blue said hesitantly.
‘Ah good,’ said the Purlisa. ‘Psychics often find the atmosphere disturbing. So much suffering. We blessed the cells and torture chambers, but I’m not sure it’s made much difference.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘However, we will not be delayed long; then we can return to more cheering surroundings and discuss our plans.’
Blue noted the word our. It seemed she was being drawn into the monastery’s problems whether she wanted it or not. But she couldn’t see what else she might do. Without help, she could only go back to her aimless wandering in the desert.
‘Please be careful,’ the Abbot said. ‘The steps are rather steep.’
Psychic or not, Blue found the tunnels horrid. They were rough-cut in the bedrock, gloomy, claustrophobic and, surprisingly, dank: in one area water streamed down the walls. But perhaps it wasn’t so surprising. A monastery, as much as the ancient fortress before it, needed a reliable water source. This monastery was probably built on top of one.
The tunnel opened out suddenly into an underground plaza, leading in turn to what had clearly once been holding cells. Their doors all stood open so Blue could see some had been converted into austere, joyless bedrooms (only a monk on penance would elect to sleep here), but others remained in their original condition, with chains and fetters hanging from their walls.
‘Renovation programme,’ muttered the Abbot, as much to himself as anybody else. ‘Not much funds, so it will take a while.’
‘We just want you to look for a moment,’ said the Purlisa, without explaining at what.
‘To your left,’ said the Abbot and pointed.
The chamber was much larger than the miserable cells and seemed to have been used for torture. There was still some rusting equipment left in place – a metal chair with a fire drawer beneath its seat, a broken rack, a whipping post. In the centre of the room, a cage hung suspended by a chain from a hook in the ceiling. Inside it was the huddled figure of an old man, his head turned away from them.
‘What are you doing to him?’ Blue asked, appalled.
‘Look again,’ said the Purlisa quietly.
Blue looked again. The door of the cage, like that of the chamber itself, hung open.
‘Why does he stay in there?’ Blue whispered.
‘He won’t come out,’ the Abbot told her quietly. ‘We tried putting his food in the centre of the floor so he’d have to leave the cage, but he starved for three days rather than come out. So now we feed him there.’
Blue licked her lips. ‘But he must come out for … you know …’
The Abbot shook his head.
‘Not even for that. You can tell from the smell. Fortunately he eats very little.’
Blue’s stomach was knotted. She felt such a wave of pity for the creature in the cage that tears began to well up in her eyes. Then the crouched old man turned his head. ‘My gods,’ Blue gasped before she could stop herself, ‘it’s Brimstone!’
The Purlisa reacted at once. ‘You know this person?’
Blue knew him all right. Brimstone was the demonologist who’d once tried to sacrifice her brother to the demon Beleth, who’d helped the Prince of Darkness attack her Realm by way of the Analogue World. What was he doing here, on the edge of the Buthner Desert? What interest did the Abbot and his little Treasure have in him?
‘What’s the matter with him?’ Blue whispered.
‘We think a cloud dancer may have got to him,’ said the Abbot.
Fifty-Nine
‘You located him?’ Hairstreak asked the cloud dancer.
‘Yes.’
‘You reached him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where was he?’
‘Near the Mountains of Madness.’
Hairstreak frowned. He’d never heard of the Mountains of Madness. ‘Where’s that?’
‘The Kingdom of Buthner.’
Buthner? That godsforsaken hole? What did Brimstone think he was doing in Buthner? Then, like a thunderbolt, an answer occurred to him. Hiding something. Brimstone had to be hiding something. Except it couldn’t be the one thing that interested Hairstreak, he’d never have managed to smuggle that out of the country. So it had to be something else. Unless he wasn’t hiding something. Unless he’d gone to Buthner for something. Hairstreak felt his mind go into a whirl of indecision. This was why he’d hired the cloud dancer, dammit. ‘What was he doing there?’ he demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ the cloud dancer said.
Hairstreak glared at it. ‘You don’t know?’ he repeated. ‘Didn’t you bother to ask him?’
The cloud dancer said, ‘Yes.’
When it became obvious the creature wasn’t going to elaborate, Hairstreak said, ‘And …?’
‘He refused to tell me.’
‘Of course he refused to tell you!’ Lord Hairstreak exploded. ‘What did you expect? If the old goat was prepared to tell people. I’d have asked him myself. That was the whole point of hiring you, you insubstantial cretin. So you could force it out of him. Didn’t you try to force it out of him?’
The cloud dancer said, ‘Yes.’
When it became obvious for the second time the creature wasn’t going to elaborate, Hairstreak repeated, ‘And…?’
‘I think I may have overdone it.’
This was turning into a minuet. Hairstreak controlled his fury with an effort. ‘Why do you think you may have overdone it?’
‘Because he is now insane.’
‘You sent him mad?’ Hairstreak screamed. ‘So he can no longer answer questions?’
The cloud dancer said, ‘Yes.’
Hairstreak thumped the table with such force that the surface cracked. ‘And what are you going to do about it?’ he demanded.
A portion of the cloud dancer’s arm disappeared as it reached into its own dimension, then reappeared with a wide-necked jug, which it placed on the table before Hairstreak. Then it pushed two fingers down its throat, retched violently and vomited a quantity of curdled blood into the jug.
It stared triumphantly at Hairstreak. ‘Return your fee,’ it said.
Sixty
‘Where did you find him?’ Blue asked. Thankfully, they’d left the former dungeons and were now sitting together in the garden, shaded from the merciless sun by an enormous spreading tree of a type she’d never seen before.
‘Wandering in the desert,’ the Abbot said. ‘One of our monks happened on him, otherwise he would have been dead within a few hours. As it was, he was nearly dead.’
‘And was he in that state – ’ even talking about Brimstone, she shied from using the word mad ‘- when you found him? I mean, was he – ?’
The Abbot nodded. ‘Yes. He is very old. We thought he might die. We tended to his body – we have healers in the monastery – and he recovered. But we could do nothing for his mind.’
‘Forgive me,’ the Purlisa put in. He was seated beside her on the bench and she noticed his sandaled feet didn’t quite reach the ground. ‘But you know who he is?’
‘He is one of my subjects,’ Blue said. ‘His name is Silas Brimstone. He is a Faerie of the Night who once ran a manufacturing business in the capital.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘He is not a good man.’
‘That would accord with my visions,’ said the Purlisa.
There was something about him that made her feel they had been friends throughout her entire life. Blue said quietly, ‘I think you’d better tell me about your visions.’
‘Since I was little,’ the Purlisa said (and Blue somehow refrained from smiling), ‘there have been times when God granted me revelations of certain matters past and present, sometimes, although not often, future. I fear what you say is correct. This Silas Brimstone is not a good man. He has raised the Midgard Serpent.’
Blue looked at him blankly. ‘What’s the Midgard Serpent?’
‘This is where it gets hard to believe,’ the Abbot muttered.
The Purlisa glanced at him crossly, then turned back to smile at Blue. ‘Do you know of the Old Gods, Queen Blue?’
‘Oh yes,’ Blue said without elaboration. It wasn’t so long ago since she’d been face to face with one of the Old Gods herself.
‘Before the dawn of our history, one of them – his name was Loki – married a giant and fathered three children by her. The middle one was a sea serpent –’
The Abbot snorted derisively.
‘It’s a whole other reality!’ the Purlisa snapped. ‘I’ve told you that before, Jamides.’
‘You’ve told me, but I don’t believe you.’
‘Please don’t quarrel,’ Blue said, ‘I ‘d really like to hear this story.’
‘Yes, stop quarrelling, Jamides.’
‘I wasn’t quarrelling.’
‘Well, stop snorting then.’ The Purlisa turned back to Blue, ‘I don’t suppose for a minute it was a natural birth. The father was very tricky and may have used magic to transform the poor little mite. But in any case the Emperor of the Old Gods got to hear about the business and decided that the birth was an abomination –’
‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’ put in the Abbot.
The Purlisa ignored him. ’ – and threw the serpent into the great ocean that encircles Midgard.’
‘Where luckily it discovered it was a sea serpent,’ the Abbot said, casting his eyes heavenwards.
‘Where it began to grow and grow until it was so large it was able to surround the whole of Midgard.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Blue. ‘You saw all this in a vision?’
The Purlisa shook his head. ‘No, no, I saw none of this in a vision. It’s recorded in the Annals of the Old Gods.’
‘Which some of us don’t take literally,’ the Abbot said.
The Purlisa closed his eyes. ‘Which Jamides is too modern to take literally.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘But we won’t worry too much what Jamides thinks, will we, Queen Blue?’ While Blue was searching for a diplomatic response, he went on. ‘The creature began to squeeze the boundaries of Midgard, causing earthquakes and tidal waves and hurricanes and the like, and eventually it became obvious that if something wasn’t done the whole of Midgard would be destroyed. All life would be wiped out.’ He shivered. ‘Dreadful thought. So the Emperor appointed a series of heroes to tackle the problem. The serpent ate most of them, but one discovered the only effective weapon against it was a hammer – swords or projectiles or anything of that sort simply wouldn’t work. So he used his war hammer and the serpent shrank to manageable proportions. It ceased to give trouble and things settled down in Midgard for several thousand years.’
‘Where exactly is Midgard,
Purlisa?’ Blue asked.
‘It’s our present reality,’ the Purlisa said. ‘The whole of the Faerie Realm and the Analogue World – all of it. It takes in Hael as well, I believe. It’s all the dimensions of reality we can experience.’
‘Oh,’ Blue said.
‘Now the Purlisa thinks the trouble will be starting up again.’ The Abbot smiled.
‘I know it will be starting up again,’ the Purlisa said soberly. ‘Your friend Brimstone –’
‘No friend of mine,’ Blue murmured.
‘– has called up the Serpent. Called it into our reality: into Midgard, that is. I saw it clearly in my vision. This will start the cycle again. The beast can only grow and grow. Unless we find a hero to stop it, our reality will eventually be destroyed.’
There was a long moment’s silence. Eventually Blue said hesitantly, ‘But, Purlisa, surely the story of the Midgard Serpent is a myth?’
‘Of course it is!’ the Abbot snorted.
‘Perhaps it is,’ the Purlisa told her calmly, ‘but my vision shows that Mr Brimstone called up a serpent of some sort before he went insane.’ He blinked benignly. ‘And the earthquakes have already started.’
Blue glanced at the Abbot, who nodded reluctantly, then said, ‘But, of course, Buthner has always had earthquakes from time to time.’
‘So far,’ the Purlisa said briskly, ‘the quakes have been confined to the deep desert. But they will get worse until a hero slays the serpent.’ He smiled with great warmth at Blue. ‘Which is where you come in.’
Blue stared at him without speaking. She liked the Purlisa hugely, but that didn’t mean she necessarily believed him. The Midgard story did sound like a myth even the Abbot thought so. Perhaps Brimstone really had called up some sort of serpent – he’d called up enough demons before she put a stop to that nonsense, and he might well have discovered some other source of nasty creatures. Perhaps what he’d been doing caused an earthquake. But that hardly mattered. Because none of this was her affair. She wasn’t the hero they needed. She wasn’t even the heroine they needed. And she had other things to do. Henry could be dying somewhere while the Purlisa had her off chasing serpents. She opened her mouth to speak, but the Purlisa beat her to it.
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