The worm was in a frenzy. He knew he’d been chemically sandbagged, but the lethe meant he couldn’t remember what had happened. Now, having failed to extract the information directly from Chalkhill’s mind, he was trying to nag it out of him.
‘But we’re friends!’ Cyril exclaimed mentally. ‘At least I thought we were. You know what happened, don’t you? Why don’t you tell me? I’m the one who’s going to make you Purple Emperor. Have you forgotten that? Don’t you have any loyalty? To me? To the Revolution?’
‘Your Revolution’s a joke,’ Chalkhill told him sourly. Then, echoing something Hairstreak said, ‘You haven’t been able to make real headway for centuries.’
There was a sudden mental silence. Then the wangaramas said, ‘How did you find out? Who told you that?’
‘Not you, anyway.’
‘It’s not relevant any more,’ Cyril shrieked mentally. ‘We’re not going to fail this time!’
‘No you’re not,’ said Chalkhill tiredly, ‘But it doesn’t matter. What’s happened is that our friend Lord Hairstreak has decided to have you surgically removed from my bottom and transplanted into the body of Emperor Apatura.’
The wangaramas gave the mental equivalent of a screech. ‘The old Purple Emperor? But he’s been resurrected!’
‘That’s the whole point,’ Chalkhill said. ‘Apparently with you inside him he’ll appear a lot more lifelike.’
‘You know this will kill me, don’t you?’ Cyril said.
Like that mattered to anybody. Chalkhill said, ‘Don’t be silly, Cyril. Of course it won’t kill you. You wouldn’t be much good to Hairstreak if you’re dead.’ A thought struck him and he mused aloud, ‘I wonder why he doesn’t just stick a new wyrm up the Emperor’s nose, though ...’
Cyril picked up on the question. ‘Won’t work with a resurrected host. Has to be a transplant.’
‘Well,’ said Chalkhill piously, ‘I feel for you, Cyril, I really do. I think Lord Hairstreak is being beastly and not for the first time, I might add. If it was in my power to help, then help I would, but regrettably it isn’t—I’m as much a prisoner of that vile little man as you are.’
‘Oh, save your sympathy for yourself,’ said Cyril sniffily. ‘You probably won’t survive the operation either.’
Seventy-Nine
They moved at a crawl through the remainder of the first level. Most of the traps were lethal, but easy to avoid provided you were cautious and kept your wits about you.
Eventually, their nerves stretched to breaking-point, they reached the stairs to Level Two.
Henry hung back feeling cross and frightened at the same time. He was cross because Blue had asked him to stay close to Comma (who liked to lurk at the back of the party for safety) so he couldn’t stay close to her. He was frightened because this place would frighten Arnie Schwarzenegger. You could be killed here, horribly. One of the party already had been.
They were on a downward flight of broad stone steps, dimly lit by torches set at intervals along the walls. Henry assumed the torches were for atmosphere, to give the stairs a suitably eerie effect. In the Realm, interior light mostly came from softly glowing spheres called glowglobes, but even apart from that these torches didn’t look right. They made no smoke stains, for one thing. And their flames all seemed exactly the same size, as if they were generated artificially, like a coal-effect fire or something made by magic. Or maybe, thinking of magic, they weren’t really there at all. Maybe they were an illusion, a sort of three-dimensional moving wallpaper.
‘Pyrgus ...’ Blue said uncertainly.
Pyrgus was in the lead, flanked by Nymph. Pyrgus was always in the lead—he didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. Henry thought if they got out of this weird maze alive he’d ask if that was for real or just bluff.
Pyrgus stopped at once. ‘Everything all right, Blue?’ She was just a step or two behind, on the opposite side of him from Nymph. Then came the soldiers Ochlodes and Palaemon, then Comma and Henry ignominiously bringing up the rear.
Blue said, ‘Is there a statue?’
‘What?’
‘Is there a statue at the bottom of the steps?’
‘I can’t see to the bottom of the steps yet,’ Pyrgus said. ‘What’s this about, Blue?’
‘I want you to tell me if there’s a statue at the bottom. When you can see. Tell me at once.’
‘Yes, all right, Blue.’
The torches were all the same. Not just the flames, but the torches themselves and the brackets they were in. If you looked at one, it looked old—the iron was sort of rusty and flaky. But then when you looked at the next one, it was rusty and flaky in exactly the same places. That couldn’t be natural. Or a coincidence either. There was something fake about these torches, maybe not an illusion spell, but —
‘There’s a statue, Blue,’ Pyrgus said. He was hesitating at a bend in the flight of steps, staring down at something the rest couldn’t see.
‘Is it pointing?’
‘It’s got one arm stretched out, yes.’
‘I knew it!’ Blue hissed.
Pyrgus started to move forward. Blue caught up. Nymph was saying, ‘There’s a circular chamber at the bottom of the steps and a pointing statue in the middle.’
‘I can see it now,’ Blue said, then added worriedly, ‘We’d better stop for a minute.’
Henry stopped. One of the torches wasn’t the same as the others. It was similar—very similar—but when you were looking at them as closely as he was, you could see the flaking was in a different place. Why should all the other torches be exactly the same and this one different? With a thought half-formed in his mind, Henry reached up to touch the torch—one way of finding out if it was an illusion. It felt solid and there was heat from the flame. Then he noticed that the bracket was on a pivot. He glanced at the other torches, but no pivots there: they were all firmly fixed. The special torch was some sort of lever! It was a disguised lever!
‘What is it?’ Pyrgus asked.
‘Nobody go near the statue!’ Blue said urgently. ‘Nobody!’
‘What’s special about the statue, Princess Royal?’ Nymph asked.
There was a sudden excitement in Blue’s voice. ‘I can get us out of here!’ she said. ‘If you just give me a minute, I’m sure I can get us out safely. Hairstreak’s based his design on a historical maze!’
It was Pyrgus who got it first. ‘You know where the exits are?’
‘I think so,’ Blue said. ‘I studied this maze at school. I still remember bits of it. I certainly remember the statue. You can move it round. If I’m right, it makes a difference where the statue is pointing. If you turn it the wrong way, you can kill yourself, but there’s one setting that opens a way out. If I can remember it, we’re free.’
Henry curled his fingers around the torch bracket. If there was a secret lever, it had to open something.
‘Be careful,’ Pyrgus said to Blue. ‘You have to be very careful: this is the second level—you can be attacked.’
‘You’re all right behind me. If there’s any danger, come running. I think I remember what to do. This is our best chance to get out of here.’
‘Good luck, Blue,’ Pyrgus said softly.
Blue started down.
Henry pulled the lever.
There was a grinding noise of stone on stone. A huge section of the steps fell away beneath their feet, plunging the entire party into an abyss beneath.
Eighty
‘—after which I stole her knickers,’ Brimstone concluded with a look of satisfaction. The confession had taken longer than he thought, largely due to that business with the seven imps, but the effort would be worth it. Mindset was everything in this sort of magic. You could ditch almost all the other preparations—and even some of the safeguards—once you got it right.
He trotted back down the aisle, picked up the bag containing the black cockerel—parrot, indeed!—and began to wrestle with the drawstring. Once he had bitten the head off the bird, he could use
the blood to draw the necessary circle and mark out the protections. The human blood from the Blood Bank would come into the picture a little later.
The bag sprang open suddenly and the cockerel exploded out of it in a frenzy of squawks and feathers. Brimstone grabbed for it and missed. The bird took off across the broken pews. Brimstone hared after it but ran out of breath after several paces. He stopped, panting. He’d have to do without the damn cock. At least he still had the bag of human blood. If he used it properly, it would work almost like a sacrifice.
Brimstone began to shift pews to give himself a clear working space. When he had finished, he took a piece of chalk from his bag and, with the expertise of long practice, drew a large equilateral triangle on the floor, its apex pointing towards the altar. He sketched the symbolic fortifications quickly, then stood with one arm upraised while his free hand held the grimoire.
‘"Save us from the fear of Hell",’ he intoned, using the orison from the book. ‘"Allow not the devils to destroy my soul when I conjure them from the Pit and when I order them to accomplish that which I desire. Let the day be light, let the sun and moon shine, as I call them. They are indeed terrible and of monstrous deformity: but let them be restored to pleasing and familiar forms when they come to do my bidding. Save me from those who have frightful faces and permit them to obey me when I call them from Hell!"’
He put the book to one side—fearfully windy, like most Analogue World grimoires. Who cared what they looked like? Demons were demons and just as dangerous in their spindly little natural form than they were when they took on hideous shapes.
He sighed philosophically, then searched out the bag of blood and set it in the middle of the triangle. Astonishing really: blood-in-a-bag—the Analogue World was a creepy place.
There was an athame somewhere in his standard equipment, useless in the Realm (unless you wanted to stab somebody) but perfect here in the Analogue World. He found it eventually and used it to draw the outlines of the opening sigils in the air above the triangle. At home they would actually have appeared. Here you had to visualise them, imagining a trail of blue fire oozing from the tip of the athame. It was a bit tricky working this way, but he took his time and managed it effectively enough.
As he finished, he stabbed the blood bag through the centre, pinning it to the floor of the church. ‘Trinitas,’ he called out loudly, ‘Sother, Messias, Sabahot, Athanatos, Pentagna, Agragon —’ The words of power went on and on. Within minutes their vibrations began to strain the fabric of reality beyond the triangle. ‘—Ischiros, Otheos, Visio, Flos —’
The bloodflow from the punctured bag started to crawl across the floor towards the tip of the triangle, then reared up like a snake. Brimstone was chanting now, intoning the words in a steady hammer beat. ‘—Origo, Salvator, Novissimus —’ The blood snake began to sway in time to the rhythm.
He was approaching the climax of the operation. He could feel the power like trapped lightning all around him. For the first time he had a twinge of doubt about short-cutting the safeguards and preparations, but there was nothing he could do about that now. ‘—Primogenitus, Sapientia, Virtus, Paraclitus —’ The blood snake reared to its fullest extent, then pulled back as if about to strike. The familiar Orchestra of Beleth struck up all around him, quietly at first, then swelling like a symphony to fill the church. ‘—Via, Mediator, Medicus, Salus, Agnus, Ovis, Vitulus, Spes!’ Brimstone screamed. The blood snake struck.
With an audible snap, a portal opened up before the altar. Demon forms swarmed through it in a gibbering horde.
Eighty-One
Fogarty found Queen Cleopatra skinning a deer. Her green arms were bloodied to the elbow and there were spatters of blood on her bare legs.
‘Don’t you have people to do that for you?’ Fogarty asked curiously.
She gave him a sidelong glance with those astounding golden eyes. ‘That’s not the way things are done in the forest, Gatekeeper.’ Her hands wielded the knife deftly as she plunged deeper into the carcass. ‘We all muck in.’ She smiled slightly. ‘Isn’t this the way it’s done in the Analogue World?’
‘Can’t imagine our own dear Queen with anything between her knees except a horse,’ Fogarty muttered dourly. ‘Your Majesty, I—’
‘Cleopatra will do. Or Cleo. No one stands on ceremony in the forest once they’ve been introduced.’
Fogarty sat himself down on a tree stump, pleasantly surprised by the lack of stiffness as he bent. ‘I think our little party may be in trouble,’ he said bluntly.
Cleopatra set down the knife and turned to look at him. No questions: she just waited. Fogarty liked that. ‘I don’t think the Emperor was at the palace,’ he said. ‘I think Hairstreak may have taken him to his new mansion right here in the forest. I think our party may be trying to get into Hairstreak’s mansion right now.’ What he really thought was that the party was probably inside and under attack, but since he couldn’t really justify anything he felt it better not to overstate his case.
Oddly enough, Queen Cleopatra didn’t ask him why he thought any of it. Instead she said, ‘My people would have reported to me if the status of their mission had changed.’
‘Mightn’t have had the chance,’ Fogarty said.
‘If they went to Hairstreak’s mansion, they would have returned to the forest.’
The implication was clear enough. If they’d passed through the forest, they would have stopped and told her. Fogarty sighed audibly. ‘Pyrgus was leading them,’ he said. ‘You can’t tell what that boy would do.’
The trouble was it all sounded lame and Fogarty knew it. Besides which, he wasn’t sure what he wanted the Queen to do, even if she believed him. But Cleopatra only said, ‘You’re worried about the boy.’
‘Yes.’
‘My daughter’s in the party,’ Cleopatra said.
Fogarty blinked. ‘Your daughter?’ He made a rapid calculation. There was only one person it could be. ‘Nymphalis is your daughter?’
The Queen nodded. ‘Yes.’ She pushed herself erect. ‘I think I trust your intuition, Gatekeeper.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Lead my army to Lord Hairstreak’s mansion,’ the Queen told him soberly. ‘If you’re right, the time for concealment may have passed us by.’
Eighty-Two
‘Tell him no!’ screamed the wyrm desperately.
Chalkhill, who needed no urging, was already shrieking, ‘No, I won’t do it! Not now. Never. Leave me alone. Get your filthy hands off me. I won’t, I won’t, I absolutely, positively, simply won’t! You can’t make me.’
Hairstreak watched him with mild amusement. ‘Actually I can,’ he said. He nodded at two black-uniformed guards who fell in beside Chalkhill and seized him by the arms.
‘Fight them! I’ll help. Head-butt them in the face!’
‘Will you be quiet!’ Chalkhill hissed mentally. ‘I’ll never get us out of this if you don’t let me think.’
As the wyrm fell silent, Chalkhill raced through his options and found there weren’t any. He could go like a sacrificial lamb and have the lethal operation or he could fight tooth and claw and get dragged away to have the lethal operation. Either way, he had the lethal operation.
‘I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss,’ Hairstreak said. ‘It’s a minor procedure.’
‘Which will kill me!’ Chalkhill snarled. He was still terrified of Hairstreak, but well beyond being polite to him any more.
Hairstreak raised an eyebrow. ‘Who on earth told you that?’
Chalkhill stared at him. It was only Cyril who’d told him the operation was lethal and Cyril hadn’t proven all that trustworthy in the past.
‘I don’t suppose I could persuade you —’
‘Shut up!’ Chalkhill growled.
Now he came to think of it, it didn’t make a lot of sense for Hairstreak to have him killed—he’d proven himself very valuable in the past. So perhaps the operation wasn’t dangerous. Perhaps —
‘Nooooooooooo!’ wailed Cyril inside his head.
It was irritating, but the sweeping exit was spoiled by the fact he didn’t know where he was going. Chalkhill stopped at the door and waited until Hairstreak’s goons caught up with him.
‘Lead on, my good men,’ he instructed them grandly.
The guards glanced at Hairstreak, who nodded slightly, then strolled across to join them. ‘I’m glad you’ve seen sense, Jasper,’ he said mildly. ‘But it really is completely safe.’
To Chalkhill’s surprise, there was not so much as a whimper from Cyril.
It was a part of Hairstreak’s mansion he hadn’t visited before, although he’d heard rumours about it. They marched through some sinister crypts, then down wide stone steps into what looked like a massive natural cavern. Chalkhill spotted the obsidian maze at once, then looked away quickly, pretenting he hadn’t. People who learned Hairstreak’s darker secrets had a habit of disappearing permanently. He glanced around ostentatiously, trying to find the operating theatre.
A horrid thought struck him. Perhaps all the talk of an operation was just to get him here. Perhaps he was going to be dropped into the maze to face the —
‘That’s it!’ said Cyril suddenly. ‘That’s what he’s planning! We have to get out of here. Knee him in the wambles! Stick a —’
But that couldn’t be right. If Hairstreak simply wanted him down here he’d have said so, or had him dragged down by the guards. No need for some elaborate deception.
‘Above your head,’ said Hairstreak.
‘Sorry?’
‘You were looking for the operating theatre. It’s above your head.’
Chalkhill looked upwards.
The Purple Emperor Page 24