Ruler of the Realm

by Herbie Brennan

  There was engine noise behind him and the approaching glow of headlights. Henry stepped on to the verge without looking round: he was wearing a light-coloured jacket so the car should have no trouble seeing him. Charlie never said ‘psychiatric problem’ either. She talked very gently about ‘emotional pressures’ and ‘strain’. Just the sort of thing he’d been thinking himself. She was calm and optimistic and reassuring, the way you were supposed to be with lunatics. But the bottom line was still the same. She thought he was nutty as a fruitcake.

  The car sounded like it had slowed down, but didn’t seem to be passing. Henry glanced behind him.

  There was a glowing silver disc hovering above the road.

  Twelve

  It was just like the time he’d run away from his father. One minute you were minding your own business, trying to persuade the barman you were old enough to order ale. The next you were staring up at a bunch of hulking great soldiers who called you sir with exaggerated politeness, but were quite prepared to break your arms if you didn’t do exactly what they said.

  Only this time it wasn’t his father who’d sent them: it was his little sister, for Light’s sake! He’d always known being made Queen would go to her head. She was bossy enough while she was still a princess.

  Pyrgus smiled at the six hulking great soldiers standing round his table at the inn and tried to sound more confident than he felt.

  ‘Please present my compliments to Her Majesty,’ he told their officer grandly, ‘and inform her that I shall join her at the palace at my earliest, my very earliest convenience.’ Even as he said it, he knew it wouldn’t do.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ the Captain said, ‘but Her Majesty was insistent that you should come straight away, sir. We have orders to escort you, sir.’ He blinked, slowly. ‘Now, sir.’

  Pyrgus knew what it was all about, of course. He’d already had two messages from Blue, hand delivered by an orange Trinian. The first was a friendly little note asking him to come to the palace ‘to talk about something important’. When he ignored that one, the Trinian popped up again days later. This time the tone was less friendly. He was ‘commanded’ to attend at the palace forthwith ‘to discuss matters of critical importance to the Realm’. He’d ignored that one too. It would do Blue good to realise not everybody was going to jump to attention every time she snapped her fingers. But now she’d sent the heavy squad.

  He made one more try. ‘If you’ll just allow me to go home and change …’ he said and gestured vaguely, still smiling. ‘As you can see, I’m not exactly dressed to attend a meeting at the palace.’ Which was true enough. Since he’d abdicated the throne, he’d made a point of dressing like a scruff. At the moment, he was wearing a torn leather jerkin and a pair of brown breeches that would have disgraced a pig farmer. The sense of freedom was wonderful.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ the Captain said, ‘Her Majesty’s orders said at once. Very clear she was on that point. No mention of a dress code.’ He leered. ‘I expect your clothes will be acceptable, sir.’

  Pyrgus sighed. ‘Oh, very well, Captain – I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Now, sir?’

  ‘Right now, Captain.’

  They had a golden ouklo waiting outside. It floated at knee height for easy access and hummed a little with the excess of energy that only came with a fresh spell charge. At least Blue thought about his comfort.

  The carriage bobbed like a boat as he climbed on board. To his surprise, the Captain and two of his men climbed in as well and sat facing him with stony expressions. The remaining three guards swarmed quickly up on top with the driver. The coach pulled away smoothly as soon as the door closed. Pyrgus caught the snick of a magical lock and smiled a little. They were taking no chance of losing him.

  ‘Don’t suppose you know what this is all about, do you?’ he asked the Captain conversationally.

  ‘No, sir, ’fraid not, sir.’

  ‘No crises? No wars about to start? No demons on the loose?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know anything about that, sir,’ the Captain said stiffly.

  ‘No,’ Pyrgus murmured. ‘I don’t suppose you would.’ Professional soldiers never knew anything about anything. He gave up on conversation, settled back and closed his eyes.

  The seats were the new spell-treated ordofoam that shaped itself to your bottom and squeezed it gently now and then to prevent discomfort on long journeys. It felt as if you were sitting on a giant hand and Pyrgus wasn’t altogether sure he liked it. No matter how much he steeled himself, every squeeze came as a surprise so that he gave a small, involuntary jump. It was like having an annoying facial tic, except not on your face.

  As a diversion, he glanced through the carriage window. ‘This isn’t the way to the palace,’ he said at once.

  ‘No, sir, indeed not, sir. That’s because we’re not going to the palace, sir.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Pyrgus frowned.

  ‘Not at leave to say, sir. Security, sir.’

  That was typical of Blue. She was nearly as paranoid as Mr Fogarty. All the same, it had to be something pretty serious for her to want to meet him somewhere other than the palace.

  A thought struck him and he asked, ‘Am I the only one coming to this meeting?’

  ‘Couldn’t say, sir,’ said the Captain.

  The seat squeezed Pyrgus’s bottom distractingly. He ignored it and looked out of the window again. Maybe he’d been a bit hasty in ignoring Blue’s first messages. She might be bossy, but she wasn’t stupid and she was Queen now, with responsibility for everything that happened in the Realm. She knew how he felt about affairs of State, so she would hardly have sent for him if it hadn’t been important. The very least he could do was give her a bit of support. He scowled. Now he was feeling guilty.

  The carriage, he realised, was leaving the city through Cripple’s Gate. Which meant Blue had called her little meeting not just away from the palace, but away from any of the official residences. In all probability she’d hired somewhere, or, even more likely, had Madame Cardui arrange a safe house. He wondered where it was.

  Nearly twenty minutes later, it turned out to be a small manor house surrounded by trees and so many security devices it was all Pyrgus could do to keep from laughing. He’d really have to talk to Blue about all this nonsense. Except the figure on the doorstep wasn’t Blue.

  It was Black Hairstreak.

  Thirteen

  Henry froze. This was straight out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The craft was massive – easily the size of two or three articulated trucks – and hung, humming, perhaps six feet above the surface of the road (which was vibrating just the way the ground at Mr Fogarty’s had done, he thought inconsequentially). It was like the fake photographs of every flying saucer he’d ever seen – a shining metal disc with a bump on the top and light streaming down from the bottom. There was a row of small, round portholes (although he couldn’t see anything through them) and above them another circle of lights. Any minute now, if this was the movies, it would put down a silvery ramp and a little green man with a big head and enormous eyes would walk out.

  The saucer put down a silvery ramp and a little green man with a big head and enormous eyes walked out.

  Henry tried to run, then suddenly felt very calm.

  In his calm, frozen state he became very much aware of everything around him. Particularly the silence. There was no traffic noise. The little background sounds of night animals and insects had stopped. The saucer was no longer humming.

  It was a beautiful saucer. Very beautiful indeed.

  The little man was definitely green, but not bright green or olive green or grass green or anything like that. If you were filing a report for the police (although it was silly to think of filing a report for anybody) you would strictly need to say he had a greenish tint to his skin, which was otherwise grey.

  The little green man turned in his direction. His eyes were very big and very black and very beautiful. If Henry looked deeply in
to them, he could see stars and constellations. He could see the depths of Space. The little green man began to walk in Henry’s direction.

  Somewhere buried deep inside the Henry who was calm there was a second Henry screaming to get out. The second Henry was in a panic, hysterical, terrified. The second Henry wanted to fight, wanted to smash the little man down, mash him into the ground underfoot like a bug (and could probably have done it too since the little man’s limbs were spindly as twigs). But most of all, the second Henry wanted to run away from the little green man and the big glowing saucer as if the devil himself were after him.

  Henry screamed, but no sound came out. He couldn’t move. The little green man was looking at him and he was completely paralysed. It occurred to him he might be about to die.

  The little green man looked deep into his eyes and climbed into his head.

  It was horrible having somebody inside his head: like an insect crawling relentlessly into his ear, only worse. The little green man crawled relentlessly into Henry’s mind, lifting up flaps here and there to look at Henry’s private thoughts. Look, there was Henry’s sister Aisling with a dagger sticking out of her head. Look, there was Blue in her bath. Look, there was Henry’s mum explaining why everything she did was actually for Henry’s benefit.

  The little green man seemed to be looking for something. Or maybe just making sure who Henry was. He crawled and crawled and poked and prodded. Once he watched a memory of Henry sitting on the loo. There was nowhere he couldn’t go, nowhere he didn’t go.

  And then he withdrew.

  A beam of bright blue light emerged from the flying saucer and played over Henry. Although he didn’t move, he felt as if he was turned upside down to stand on his head. Then he turned the right way up again and began to tremble. The tremble became a vibration and the vibration became a scream. The blue light began to draw Henry up off the road towards the flying saucer.

  Something in Henry told him he must be dreaming. It was the only thing that made sense. He must have got tired walking home and lain down by the side of the road for a little nap. Now he was dreaming. He had to be dreaming, because there was no door in the saucer and he was floating through the metal hull, which was impossible unless he was dreaming.

  Henry was inside the flying saucer. The light was gone, the little green man was gone and there didn’t seem to be anybody else in there. He was no longer paralysed either. He could move his hands and his arms and his legs. In fact he felt normal. But what was happening wasn’t normal. He was on board a flying saucer and the aliens had toddled off somewhere. That meant he could escape.

  He wanted to escape. God knew he wanted to escape. But …

  There was something wrong with him. He knew it for certain now. He wasn’t dreaming. This was too real to be dreaming. But at the same time it was exactly like a dream. Things happened. Now the thing that happened was he found himself exploring, not escaping.

  The saucer was even larger on the inside than it looked from the outside, like a tardis. He was in a room with silver walls and a soft, squishy floor that seemed somehow … organic. There were no windows and he couldn’t find the light source. (Although there was light: a friendly rosy glow.) There was a door without a handle, but as he approached, it slid open automatically the way doors did in Star Trek. Or Tesco’s.

  He was in a corridor that meandered like a stream. And little branches meandered off it – often only a few yards long – leading into other chambers. Some had doors, some hadn’t. Henry meandered with the corridor and discovered chambers with metallic pods, chambers with weapons racks (the weapons looked like laser rifles), a chamber stuffed with giant eggs. (At least he thought they might be giant eggs, since they were large and white and egg-shaped.) He seemed to wander for hours, peering into chamber after chamber. The funny thing was, he never found a kitchen or a bathroom.

  He found a horrible, scary room.

  Henry opened the door and was half blinded by a sudden glare. Then his eyes adjusted and he was looking at banks of huge transparent tubes, each one larger than he was. There was a maze of wires and piping running from the tubes to a control console in the middle of the room. Nearly half the tubes were lit by violet light so you could see there was a thick, gooey liquid inside, bubbling like a great, slow fish-tank. Floating in the liquid were scores of naked human babies, their eyes tight shut, their little hands opening and closing together in a ghastly rhythm.

  Henry tried to break open the tubes to let the babies out, but the tubes were made from some sort of glass that wouldn’t break. He wondered if he could figure out how to open them using the console, but was afraid he might accidentally hurt the babies. After a while he left the chamber in an agony of frustration.

  Behind him, the babies opened their hands and closed their hands … opened their hands and closed their hands … opened …

  Henry found a porthole and looked out. He expected to see the road where he’d been walking, but instead he was looking into a blackness peppered by the brightest stars. He was looking into Space. The saucer had taken off. There was no possibility of escape any more.

  A great sadness overcame Henry and he lay down beside the porthole to have a little sleep.

  He woke surrounded by little green men staring at him with enormous black eyes. They were directed by a tall, fair-haired woman who looked completely human and was very, very beautiful.

  ‘I want to show you something, Henry,’ said the woman, and he heard her quite distinctly even though she had not moved her lips.

  The tall, beautiful woman looked at him sadly. ‘I want to show you what will happen if humans do not learn to treat their planet with respect.’ She turned to gesture at a viewing screen built into the wall behind her.

  The screen lit up with images of a devastated world. He watched cities razed by nuclear war. He saw oceans curdled with pollution. There were children starving as the Earth was over-populated. (White children, too, not just the familiar wide-eyed, pot-bellied kids from Africa.) There were people whose faces were a crawling mass of cancers as the ozone layer finally collapsed. There were hurricanes and earthquakes, tidal waves engulfing entire continents. There were radiation mutants, no longer really human, crawling across barren wastelands.

  Henry tried to look away, but could not move his head. ‘Will you tell them?’ asked the woman. ‘Will you warn them what will happen?’

  Other voices chorused in his head: ‘Henry will be the Anointed!’

  Without warning, Henry was naked, lying on a gurney. He was surrounded by little green men, but now they were wearing white coats. To his embarrassment, the beautiful woman was there too. She was also wearing a white coat. Beside the gurney were trays of surgical instruments and some sort of machine with angled arms and drills and scalpels that looked as if it had been put together by a mad dentist.

  The beautiful woman smiled benignly. ‘You must be prepared,’ she said.

  ‘Henry will be King,’ the voices chorused. ‘Henry will be the Anointed King.’

  Alien hands reached out to touch him. There was a flooding smell of antiseptic. A foam sprayed across his body, cool at first, then burning acid so he could hardly bear it until something else flowed over him and washed it off. The creatures probed his bottom and his genitals.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ thought Henry, but found he couldn’t speak.

  ‘Prepare the implant,’ said a harsh voice in his mind, different to any of the voices he’d heard before.

  The beautiful woman was leaning over him, still smiling broadly. In her hand was the dentist’s drill, which spun with a high-pitched whine. But she wasn’t bringing it towards his mouth: she was bringing it towards his eye.

  Henry began to scream and couldn’t stop.

  Fourteen

  ‘It makes sense,’ Blue said.

  They were seated among the orchids in the conservatory behind the Throne Room. It was a strange place for a Council of War, but her father had protected it with so many spells it wa
s the most private chamber in the palace.

  Blue’s eyes moved from one to the other. Gatekeeper Fogarty still looked an old man, but the rejuvenation treatments were beginning to bite. There was an energy about him and he had better skin. Beside him, Madame Cardui was sitting with her eyes closed, but Blue knew she was very much awake. These two were her friends. The disapproving looks came from the three uniformed Generals: Creerful, Vanelke and Ovard. She wished Pyrgus would get here. She felt outnumbered.

  Blue licked her lips. ‘Look at it the way they will,’ she said. ‘Everything’s been topsy-turvy for months. Uncle Hairstreak has tried to take over the throne twice and failed –’

  ‘Which is precisely the reason why he’s unlikely to try again, Majesty,’ General Ovard put in patiently.

  He’d been her father’s closest military advisor. But she could not afford to show weakness. ‘Let me finish, General.’ Then, without waiting for a response, she turned to the others. ‘Hairstreak’s still ambitious. And even though he failed, the Faeries of the Night still back him.’

  ‘They won’t have much stomach for another failure,’ Ovard muttered.

  This time Blue ignored him. ‘Now look at the other side of the picture. We came close to losing first time. What ha—’

  ‘Oh, come, Your Majesty, I’d hardly say we came close to losing.’ Not Ovard this time but General Creerful. They were old men. Senior military were always old men. Empress or not, they would never take her seriously. They looked at her and saw a little girl.

  Blue glared at him. ‘My father, the Purple Emperor, was murdered, General. I’d say that brought us pretty close to losing.’

  Creerful dropped his eyes and said nothing. After a moment, Blue went on, ‘What happened next was a clever plot that could have succeeded. In fact, it very nearly did. Don’t forget my brother was banished from the Purple Palace. We were very, very lucky to find the allies we did. We could never have turned the tide without them. We can’t count on that sort of luck a second time and my uncle knows it.’