They sat by the fire. There were no chairs, only a heap of rugs and a large silver dish full of ripe fruit. Malachi's nostrils opened and he inhaled the sweet smell of apples, pears, persimmons, grapes, and even a mango.
"Madrigal?" he asked.
"She likes to keep an eye on me," the elf said, waiting for Malachi to find a spot to sit on and then sinking to a cross-legged position with more grace than a ballerina, his white coat swirling around him. Green eyes watched him. They were deeply unnerving. "Do not worry, Curiosity, I am no Giantkiller to her."
Malachi wasn't sure if it was the news or the use of one of his urnames that bothered him the most. He went to get cards from his pocket, then remembered he had no pocket.
"We will just have to talk," the elf sighed, waving one hand vaguely in a gesture that looked dismissive except that around his fingertips yellow glitter appeared, fizzed, and snapped. The smell of lemons briefly overpowered the mango and their conversation itself had become a game. "What brings you here?"
"A fifty-year mystery is not enough?"
"Why wait fifty years when you could discover me in an instant? Please, suggest something realistic."
"Lila has been home only a few months."
"She did not ask you to find me."
"No," Malachi admitted and watched the elf's face closely. He thought he detected signs of disappointment but it was hard to be sure. Tath could have played poker with the devil. "I am sure she will be glad to know news of you, however."
"I would discourage her interest," Ilya suggested wryly.
Malachi noted this but could not play with it. He would have to wait. He decided on a secondary matter. "I am here about the demon."
"I do not think so, but by all means let us discuss him." Tath's eyes were sparkling with pleasure in spite of himself.
Beside them the burning logs slouched and gave off sparks and a wave of heat. Both of them paused to enjoy it.
He must have been really lonely, Malachi thought, storing that too. "There is word that he has murdered the demon clairvoyant Madame Des Loupes. I wondered if you were able to count the dead."
"I dislike mathematics," the elf said in mild tones. "I could, I suppose, number them and enter them in some kind of book but that is the job of the Keepers. All I can tell you without them is that Teazle Sikarza is a snow white who has drifted. In fact, entire drifts of those who have been unfortunate enough to cross him are recently laid outside."
"Did you practise that line?"
"No. If I had it would have been smoother."
"Can you-"
"I expect so," the elf sighed. "But why should I?"
Malachi considered it. Favours were dangerous, it was true. "Lila is in over her head with all the things that have risen out of Under. She has a-"
"The pen, yes, I know about that." Fine, pale brows drew together and Ilya looked into the flames suddenly, giving Malachi an opportunity.
Malachi forged on. "She also has one of the very ancient fey on her back. I don't think you know about that part. And Teazle, whatever else he's doing, has been keeping up with his mathematics because he says there's some kind of Topple thing going on. As for me ..."
It was funny how eyes could be as bright green as spring leaves. It was really quite mesmerising. They almost looked lit from within. Malachi snapped out of the moment and found himself sharing a gaze with the elf that was much more deeply intimate than he cared for. The smell of lemons became overpowering and then abruptly it vanished. Malachi had admitted he needed Tath much more than Tath needed him and had no payment. The game was done. "I'm losing my touch," he sighed, shaking his heavy head and briefly putting a paw to his mouth and licking it before he realised what he was doing and put it down again.
"After fifty years of solitude I will take your company as payment for the most part," Tath said, almost equally as put out in saying so. "But let us hear the full list before we finalise the terms."
"I want to know if a human is here, by the name of Calliope Jones. And I want to know about ghosts. Plus the above."
"For the sake of my relation with Lila, I will assist you freely where she is concerned. For yourself I will trade question for question. Also, I expect you to return here with better entertainments at least once every three months."
"Man, why did you stay here?" Malachi asked in exasperation. "Fifty years! The Lock is undone. You could travel freely in Faery. You look like you could use to get out more."
"We are not in Faery," Tath said gently, as if informing a stupid person. "And I had a lot to learn. Let us keep it there. Now you may test my knowledge."
Malachi felt a chill crawling over his skin beneath the fur. Of course they were in Faery, he hadn't even felt a change. This landscape was just part of Tath's inheritance from Jack, surely ... but then he began to doubt himself. That would have been true of Jack, and Tath was now one of those irritating twofold creatures, threefold in fact.
"Okay okay, keep your hair on." He was buying time, trying to extend his senses to the dogs and the cave, find out what exactly was going on. "First off, the demon. Is Madame among the dead?"
"Yes. No."
"She died and went somewhere else or she isn't dead but she is here?"
"The latter."
"Where is here?"
"Ah ah, now it is my turn for a question," Ilya said, leaning his elbows on his knees. "What is this faery you speak of in connection to Lila?"
"Rags," Malachi said, using the least of her names. "She was lost in Under ages before, when the Lock was shut. Some say the queen left her down there on purpose. Don't remember really ... that's the problem. You forget, and then ..."
The elf inclined his head graciously with a smile, knowing exactly for once what Malachi meant simply because he was also fey now, and he knew what they all knew as part of the commons. "We are in Thanatopia," he said. "Hideous name ..." He took a breath.
"I don't want to know!" Malachi had his hand up without even thinking about it. "Don't say it. All right? Is Jones here?"
"No. What is your concern with her?"
"She owes me an explanation."
"It must be a good one."
"It had better be. Is Zal here?"
"No."
"Not been and moved on or ..."
"Yes, I anticipated that you meant ever. Why are you concerned with the Des Loupes demon?"
"Teazle was fitted for the murder and now he's under execution warrant," Malachi said. "Does Thanatopia generate ghosts?"
"No." This time Ilya looked more interested. "Tell me your concern about that."
Under the stricture of the agreement, Malachi grimaced. "I'm being haunted," he muttered. "How much fruit does Madrigal actually bring you?"
"Enough to live on. Elf. So. Not that much."
"Does she know this isn't Faery?"
"She never asked. Haunted by what?"
Malachi mumbled.
"Pardon?"
"I said I don't know, I don't know I just keep ... there's this stupid song and ... by her, all right? By that one you saw at the end, the one keeping what's left of Zal as a curio. Only it's not exactly her, but something she ... by the ships."
"This is why you asked about ghosts?"
"Yes."
"What did you do to them?"
"Nothing!"
The green eyes stared at him.
"I may have seen something. Once. A long time ago."
"Do not tell me, you have forgotten it."
"Yeah."
"Malachi, would you like me to tell you your true name?"
Malachi stared at him in horror.
The elf looked into the fire and sighed, put his face into his long hands and rubbed his eyes. "I know all the names," he said. "Of everyone. Since I found the way here and watched the snow falling. This place is outside the time of the others. Here it might be that everyone is dead, or no one yet. I know the names of all the dead, so I know them all. If I tell you, you will remember. Naturally, this is wh
y we all struggle so hard to forget."
Malachi absorbed this news slowly. "You can see when you'rewhen we're all going to die?"
"The future is not certain, to look at it is to risk insanity," the elf said.
"But you could?"
"I could try. I believe I am now a couple of questions up. Does it occur to you to wonder why so many ruinous powers are rising?"
"You mean the pen?"
"The pen is minor. It is nothing. The mind behind it is the problem, always. Nor do I mean the Fleet, before you ask. Ghosts flow from the maelstrom of chaos where mind and Void meet. As they become more real so they seek increasing definition until they emerge. They are products of the aetheric weather, if you like, but in their later stages they may become all kinds of things. However, they are weak. I cannot understand your terror of them. Explain it."
"You mean apart from their spirit-sucking tendencies?"
"Nobody of sound mind should ever let one get so close. They are easily controlled. Any corporeal being has enough grounding force to destroy them."
"With sufficient conviction. And lots of them have mindweakening powers."
"I think you mean that many people let their fear override their sense."
Malachi felt himself criticised and was wounded because it was true. "I don't understand what they want or why they affect me," he said finally, hating the sense that he was almost rolling over in front of Tath and exposing his throat, so vulnerable was he. If the elf had shown the slightest genuine hostility he wouldn't have, but he was tired and his judgement was slipping. He could feel that too.
"But you don't want to know. How common that affliction seems to be. The only interesting feature of ghosts is that they are inventions of the mind, yet they are not of the mind, and where they reveal the workings of those minds in all their span they are never so mysterious and terrible than they are to those they haunt."
"Is that some gobfangled elf way of saying I invented the bloody things?"
"They are yours. Perhaps they are also from the common mind and its fearful and longing apprehensions of travel, including the final journey. A ghost is a metaphor, a spirit, a whimsy, many things. Hungry always. Restless."
"Deadly?"
"I suppose they could be so, if you gave them that power."
"And why would someone do that?"
"Why would someone drive into a concrete barrier with sufficient force to turn themselves inside out?"
Malachi was silenced at this mention of Lila. It wasn't a question that was expecting an answer. He felt rebuked. All the things that came rushing to his mouth-she's hiding things, I was supposed to protect her, I waited, I don't know what to do-piled up in his throat and hurt it. He felt a fool.
"What Ruinous Powers did you mean?" he asked.
"The fool's rags, and the Lightbringer."
Malachi jolted out of his self-pity. "That's an ill name to be bandying around." For a while he didn't even know what the elf was talking about, had to think on it, and then it was obvious.
"Nonetheless. And then there's myself. And then the Kind Ladies, busying themselves with little things like weaving Zal a new ... Zal."
"They're what?"
"Milady agreed with Lila to try to fix Zal, as you recall. But if she did, she was to call Lila. I think that fixing Zal would be no trouble. As to how, there's another story, and into what."
Malachi was already there. He mumbled breathlessly, "She never nailed down the details." Dread chilled him so that he shivered, even though the fire's heat was scalding on his fur. "Lila didn't say. And the call. Lila meant Zal would be returned to her."
"It is unlikely that Milady chose that interpretation."
"You think he's already fixed?"
"If not then it can only be waiting on the right moment and the right threads for whatever Milady had in mind."
"Why is that demon hiding in the dead place?"
"I did not say she was hiding."
"What is she doing here?"
"Looking."
"For what?"
"She is clairvoyant. I consider the view from here different, do you not?"
"Can you talk to her?"
"If I wanted...."
"I need her to send word she's alive to the demons so that when Lila goes over there to get Teazle out of trouble they have sufficient proof to exonerate him. We have to stop him ..."
The elf was looking at him pityingly. "We? What is this obligation to interfere? You are like a fishwife, fingers in everything's guts. Perhaps it distracts you?"
Malachi stared at him. The horrible sensation of falling away to nothing was right there waiting for him in the elf's suggestion. It did distract him.
"Do you think that you are responsible for everything? The Ruinous Powers included? I can tell you for free what is responsible for their return. There are many insights available to the deeply bored over the course of fifty years' exile."
"What then?" Malachi muttered, aware that he was being given kindness, but not why.
"Same reason the worlds crack and quake," came the reply. "The oldest stir."
"Dragons," Malachi said, without hope.
The elf nodded. "Just so. Grape?" He reached over, snagged the plate, and held it out towards Malachi. The firelight glowed and flickered on the skins of the fruit and the warmth made it smell sweet and subtle. He took a mango and pressed it to his nose, then tore it open and let the juice run all over his whiskers.
He stayed a while until they had eaten all the fruit and washed off the stickiness. The fire burned low and was banked carefully by the elf, and night came he guessed, or it felt like night at least. They lay in front of the embers and the dogs gathered closer, filling the air with their stink until it was so thick Malachi didn't notice it anymore. Beyond the dogs and the fire the silence was terrible. He wondered that Ilya had not gone mad, asked, and the elf said, "It is all the same."
Malachi curled his paws beneath him and his tail around himself.
"Next time bring cards," the elf said after a while.
"I will."
As Malachi fell asleep Ilya lay and listened to the beating heart of the dog that was acting as his pillow. He was surprised that the faery hadn't spotted the lies he'd told, but realised this must be because they worked so much in his favour. Malachi didn't want to know the truth about ghosts, and when Ilya had glossed speedily past the subject he had not pursued. Ilya didn't blame him for that. He would as soon never have known the first thing about them, or the planes of the dead, or the creatures that existed there. Briefly he indulged himself in a dream of his other life, the unsullied one, and then he tucked it safely away in his imagination and felt again for the strands of hair in his hand.
The threads of dark matter around them were something his aetheric body could easily distinguish. His natural repulsion was long ago overcome in the days of necromancy, and the jangling in his nerves and the crawling under his skin was something he simply ignored as he developed his aether body around his hand, creating delicate fingers far finer than the flesh ones they sprang from. Out of his palm tendrils of aether, made unusually strong by his immersion in Under and new faery nature, were able to slowly unwind the weaving tendrils from the even finer hair. The Void itself was only emptiness, but the matter that it contained, pre-physical, pre-aetheric, dark in every degree, that was always hard to touch in any way. It was freezing cold, slippery, infinitely plastic, heavy in a way that all the necromantic tracts in existence could only describe as "spiritually heavy." It dragged at the soul, gripped, was tenacious as a leech and tricky as a weasel; oil could not be smoother nor harder to hold onto. At first he thought it was the antilife, but it wasn't. It was simply so strange as to almost pass understanding, but the one thing it reacted to was conscious creatures and if you really wanted to, you could hold it as he did, and pull and disentangle it from whatever some mind had done to it.
He read the words though he knew them already from the vibration in the black filam
ents. Sad words, lonely words, desperate words. For all that they spelled out, they were not an ending of any kind, because they weren't meant that way. They were a call. Such things weren't rare. He'd called. Who hadn't? The living understood these things as hopeless, but he knew that they were not, now more than ever. Spirits beyond the living planes did hear, and answer in the ways that were open to them. Not always the spirit called to, of course. Not always the answer wanted. But a call made in dark matter, writ with the warping force of that weapon-that sounded through the fabric of the dead zones with the piercing clarity of a hunting horn. He heard its echoes even now, vibrating on a level of his being that struggled to answer. And he wasn't the only one to hear it. He was aware of stirrings at levels so deep he hadn't known they existed until the call, and he'd been immersed decades in the unseen planes, looking, learning, watching, mastering everything he could of his new abilities.
When he'd seen Lila standing there at the water's edge with her face caved in, actually being remade right in front of his eyes by the relentless recovery of the machine, he'd wondered what she'd become and had no answer. So close to her the power of the scribbled message had been almost enough to burn through his hand. It wanted to crawl into his bones and scour him in its search for Max; it was as bright as the noon sun and he'd fought to hide and dim and silence it ever since. Max Black, Maxine, Maxamillion, had died sixteen years before and passed over within days. She was so far beyond the physical planes that he doubted there was anything coherent left of her in any level, but now he doubted that doubt and knew one way or another he was going to find out all about ghosts and the deepest parts of the dead zones because he had been slow to find this message, and slow to anchor it back to its caller, and ineffective and slow in trying to silence her. Perhaps he ought to have shown her his true face and not pretended, told her the truth instead of dishing out a warning like some fevered zealot, but she would have asked him questions, perhaps tried to cross, left the way open like an increasing rent in reality so big he'd never have been able to shut it down....
He pulled and undid the words, making them a straight thread. The power of their vibration ceased. Exhausted, he gripped the lines tightly, and slept.
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