The Purple Emperor

by Herbie Brennan

  Henry looked over the edge of the observation raft. Far below, the slim figure of Lord Hairstreak was racing for the cut-stone steps. Nymph must have spotted him as well, for she said quietly, ‘Lord Hairstreak will raise an alarm. We must return to Prince Pyrgus.’

  ‘Yes,’ Blue agreed.

  Yes, Henry thought. And then we’d better find some way to get out of here.

  They entered the operating theatre at a run. Pyrgus was standing over his father, a stricken look on his face. Blue stopped dead. ‘What’s wrong? Pyrgus, what’s wrong?’

  Pyrgus licked dry lips but said nothing. The room was a scene of carnage. Comma was crouched in one corner, curled into a trembling ball.

  ‘Pyrgus!’ Blue’s cry was almost a scream.

  ‘It’s —’ Pyrgus swallowed and started again. ‘Blue, he’s … he’s ...’ There were tears welling in his eyes. ‘I — we—it’s too late,’ Pyrgus said. ‘Daddy’s dead.’

  Blue started forward like someone sleepwalking.

  Pyrgus moved at once to meet her. ‘You mustn’t look, Blue. He’s—it’s not —’ He reached out for her arm.

  Blue shook off the restraining hand and pushed past him, her face set. She looked down at her father stretched out and strapped on the operating table. Blue whispered, ‘His head has been cut off.’

  Pyrgus said, ‘I know, Blue. Come away.’

  But Blue would not come away. ‘He can never be resurrected again.’ She looked at Pyrgus, then, helplessly, at Henry and repeated, ‘He can never be resurrected again.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Chalkhill said, ‘but would somebody like to release these straps and give me back my clothes?’

  Ninety-Four

  They moved out as a group, trembling with shock and exhaustion, but alert for the guards they knew must appear at any moment. There had been a short, broken discussion between Blue and Pyrgus about taking their father’s body, but Nymph had cut it short by pointing out brutally that it would take two of them to carry the corpse and another to carry the head—out of the question since they were going to have to fight their way out of Hairstreak’s mansion.

  Nymph more or less took charge after that, Henry noticed. Which was probably a good thing. Their party had shrunk to six. Comma, who was hardly more than a child, looked a nervous wreck and wouldn’t meet anybody’s eye. Henry was armed now—he’d taken a long dagger from the body of the shaman who’d killed the Purple Emperor—but had no illusions about his ability to use it. Both Pyrgus and Blue were functioning like automata and their faces had taken on a weird, jelly-like look. Even Flapwazzle looked subdued.

  Nymph found the original suspensor shaft and made Henry wait with Comma while she, Blue and Pyrgus went down. Henry watched them float gently to the ground, then put his arm around Comma’s shoulders and stepped into the shaft when Nymph waved. Comma shook the whole way.

  They reached the floor of the cavern and Nymph led them to the staircase. She warned them quietly to have their weapons ready and there was such authority in her voice that even Comma managed to produce some sort of knife, although his hand shook as he held it.

  But as they moved upwards into the main body of the mansion, there were no guards, no hint of Hairstreak or any of his staff. The entire building felt deserted. Once they passed an open door which gave a glimpse of a half-eaten meal on the table inside.

  They were still creeping through the ground-floor level when they heard the screams outside.

  ‘Good God!’ Fogarty exclaimed.

  Madame Cardui, normally phlegmatic, snapped an order that brought both their bearers to a halt. She leaned forward in her seat. ‘My deeah,’ she said, ‘this is quite extraordinary.’

  There was a massive portal opened on the lawn outside Lord Hairstreak’s forest mansion. Demon troops were pouring through it in an orderly stream. A pitched battle was underway between the portal and the house.

  ‘Those are Hairstreak’s people,’ Fogarty said. ‘Fighting the demons.’ He started to clamber down from his sedan chair. It wasn’t just Hairstreak’s armed guards—the whole of his household staff seemed to be outside, as if the mansion was under attack.

  ‘Where are you going, Alan?’ Madame Cardui asked sharply.

  ‘To get a closer look.’

  ‘My deeah, you will be careful?’

  But Fogarty was already pressing forward through the still ranks of Forest Faerie soldiers. This made no sense. First of all, the Hael portals were closed down. Secondly, he’d never seen a portal anything like this one. It was the wrong colour, there were no cold flames and it was huge. Thirdly, Nighters dealt with demons all the time and Hairstreak in particular was rumoured to have cut some sort of long-term deal with the Demon King or whoever their stupid leader was. Why were the demons attacking his home now?

  He caught sight of Queen Cleo at the head of her troops and made his way quickly towards her. ‘Do you know what’s going on?’ he asked breathlessly.

  ‘No, Gatekeeper. But those are demons in my forest, exactly as I feared.’

  ‘They’re attacking Hairstreak’s men,’ Fogarty said. ‘Maybe we should let them get on with it before we think of interfering.’

  The Queen watched the action thoughtfully. Her troops were massed in the trees, out of sight. Their discipline was absolute. There was not a sound that would draw attention to their presence. ‘You think they may do our job for us?’

  ‘Could do.’ Hairstreak’s people were losing, no doubt about that. Their bodies were strewn everywhere. He’d no idea why this was happening, but given half an hour he was fairly sure it would be a wipeout. With Hairstreak out of the picture, the Forest Faerie could demolish his mansion at their leisure.

  Queen Cleo said, ‘What do we do with the demons, Gatekeeper?’

  Fogarty looked at her. After a moment he said, ‘Good point.’ It was the possibility of demon portals that had worried the Forest Faerie in the first place. That thing on Hairstreak’s lawn must be their worst nightmare. And there were one hell of a lot of demons marching through it.

  ‘It may be a question of timing,’ the Queen told him thoughtfully. ‘As you say, Gatekeeper, it could be useful that the demons have attacked Lord Hairstreak. But we still cannot permit demons in the forest, not at all. The interests of my people would be best served if Hairstreak was routed, his mansion destroyed, the demons driven back to their own realm and their portal permanently closed. Ideally without revealing the existence of the Forest Faerie to the outside world.’

  ‘Tall order,’ Fogarty said.

  ‘Not if we attack now,’ the Queen said quietly. ‘While we can still contain the situation.’

  It made sense. As the Queen turned to signal to her people, Fogarty thought of Blue and Pyrgus. He hoped they’d have the sense to keep their heads down if they were anywhere nearby. There was a major battle coming and it was very easy to get yourself killed in crossfire.

  ‘Those are demons,’ Nymph said.

  They were standing by an open window in Hairstreak’s mansion watching the slaughter outside. Maybe the best thing was simply to stay put, wait for the demons to wipe out Hairstreak’s guards and servants — which probably wouldn’t take too long by the looks of it.

  As against that, there were more and more demons pouring through the portal and, once they had dealt with the defenders, there was every chance they might take over the house. Pyrgus had been captured by demons once before and it was an experience he didn’t want to repeat. Maybe they should make a break for it now, try to escape in the confusion.

  The one thing he was absolutely certain they shouldn’t do was get involved in the fight.

  ‘Those are my people!’ Nymph exclaimed suddenly. He followed the direction of her gaze. Forest Faerie were pouring from the trees like a river in spate. Before he had time to react, Nymph had jumped through the window and was running towards the fray.

  ‘Nymph!’ Pyrgus shouted desperately, then leaped to follow her.

  ‘Pyrgus!’ Blue shout
ed and launched herself through the window after him.

  Henry hesitated for no more than a second before following. Only Comma remained. He stared through the open window with a bleak look on his face.

  Fogarty chilled as he watched the Forest Faerie fight. They were the most ruthlessly efficient killing machines he’d ever seen in his life. The odd thing was nobody seemed to give orders, yet everybody clearly knew exactly what to do. The stream of faerie emerging from the forest split in two to circle both the demons and the remaining few of Hairstreak’s defenders. But instead of plunging into close combat, they remained at a distance and showered their opponents with arrows and elf-bolts. There was a moment of confusion, then demons began to fall.

  For a moment he thought the whole battle might be fought from a distance, but the demons quickly regrouped and turned to face their new attackers. The Hael troops were like insects, completely without personal fear. They hurled themselves forward, oblivious to the deadly rain of bolts and arrows. At the same instant, a tightly-knit group of Forest Faerie made a lightning sortie towards the open portal.

  ‘A convincing grasp of strategy,’ said Madame Cardui. ‘Disable the portal and you cut off demonic reinforcements.’

  The swelling demon army clearly came to the same conclusion, for a large contingent of Hael troops separated off to stop the sortie. The faerie fighters fell back, then were reinforced in their turn and pushed forward again. New ranks of larger, more heavily armoured demons had begun to emerge from the portal now. One raised a massive fire wand. An elf-bolt sliced through his right eye as he triggered the weapon and the gout of flame passed over heads to set fire to a tree.

  ‘The Queen’s not going to like that,’ Fogarty said sourly. There was a stirring in his blood. He actually wanted to be out there in the middle of the fight. Which was strange, since when he had been a soldier nearly sixty years ago, could you believe it?—he’d spent his time avoiding battle whenever humanly possible. Old age was a pain. It gave you brave new ideas, then took away the ability to carry them out.

  It looked as if he was right about the Queen not liking it. The river of Forest Faerie emerging from the trees abruptly became a flood. Foot soldiers hurled themselves upon the demon horde while archers pounded them with darts and bolts. A team made straight for the burning tree, snapping cones of suffocation spells to extinguish the flames. The party headed for the portal suddenly found itself massively reinforced. Fogarty noticed there was a three-strong team of wizards at its core.

  What happened next was almost too fast to follow. The key was a vast, flame-free explosion at the portal. The structure erupted into fragments that showered down like hail, bloodied by the body parts of nearby demons caught in the blast. Starved of their constant reinforcements, the remaining demons fell like chaff beneath the horde of Forest Faerie. It was over in minutes.

  As work teams of Forest Faerie moved in to demolish Hairstreak’s mansion, Fogarty and Madame Cardui walked on to the battlefield. The dead and dying were everywhere, but already faerie clean-up squads were hard at work destroying the evidence of what had happened here.

  ‘My deeah, isn’t that Prince Pyrgus?’

  Fogarty followed her gaze and felt a chill claw clutch his stomach. Pyrgus was lying on the grass, his jerkin soaked in blood. Blue and a worried-looking boy were kneeling beside him—with a start, Fogarty recognised him as Henry. Nymph was standing behind them, bow in hand like a guard. For some reason there was an endolg at Henry’s feet.

  ‘Pyrgus!’ yelled Fogarty as he ran towards the group.

  Pyrgus opened his eyes slowly and gave a wan smile. ‘It’s just a flesh wound, Gatekeeper. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Can you find us a Healer, Mr Fogarty?’ Blue asked. ‘And tell somebody to get Comma out of the house before they pull it down around his ears.’ She hesitated, but only briefly. ‘My father’s body is in there too. I should like it brought back to the palace for his burial.’

  Ninety-Five

  Blue woke with a start.

  There was someone in her room! She could hear the steady breathing. How had they passed the guards?

  She scrabbled for a weapon and found instead an emergency moon cone. Pale light flooded her chamber as she cracked it.

  Comma was standing at the bottom of her bed.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Blue snapped angrily. He was always creeping around where he wasn’t wanted, but this was something else.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ Comma said sulkily. ‘I want to talk to you, Blue.’

  ‘I don’t care. You can talk to me in the morning. Late in the morning. Or dammit no, you can’t. Just leave me alone and talk to somebody else. I’m going back to sleep.’ She turned and pulled the blankets over her ear.

  Comma moved to sit on the bed. ‘They’ve locked Mummy up again.’

  ‘Yes, I know. And I’m glad. She’s —’

  ‘Sometimes I can hear her screaming in the night.’

  ‘No you can’t—that’s just dreams.’

  ‘I’d have talked to her if they hadn’t locked her up. She could tell me what to do about Pyrgus.’

  There was something in his tone that stopped her at once. She sat up, caught Comma looking at her nightgown, and pulled the bedclothes up around her throat. ‘What about Pyrgus?’ she demanded angrily.

  Comma said almost sleepily, ‘He killed our father.’

  ‘No he didn’t. You know he didn’t—it was the demon that possessed Mr Fogarty, you little creep. If you —’

  ‘It was Pyrgus the second time,’ Comma said in an oddly singsong voice. ‘He thought I wasn’t watching and he cut off father’s head.’

  ‘That’s it!’ Blue said. ‘Get out!’

  ‘All right, I’m going,’ Comma told her hurriedly. He leaped from the bed and scuttled across the room, but paused at the door. ‘You ask the other man,’ he said. ‘He saw it too.’ Then he was gone.

  Blue lay in bed, fuming. Whatever happened, however bad, you could always rely on Comma to make it worse somehow.

  There was no question of sleep now, so she climbed out of bed and pulled on a dressing gown. Why did he do it? Why? Why make up stories at all, let alone in the middle of the night? Their father was already dead when they had reached that ghastly operating room. His stomach was open and his head—his head —

  Actually she couldn’t remember noticing his head was severed, but it must have been. There was certainly that hideous open wound on his stomach. Hairstreak must have—must have —

  All the same, Comma was pure evil. Or mad like his mother. Why else would he make up a story about Pyrgus? The thing was, he always messed up on the detail. Ask the other man, he said. But there wasn’t any other man. Nymphalis had killed everybody else in the room except Hairstreak, and Hairstreak had run. There was just Comma and Pyrgus and the bod—

  There was Chalkhill. They’d left him strapped to the other operating table. They’d walked out and left him hurling abuse, demanding they come back, threatening … Threatening what? Blue couldn’t remember, but it had nothing to do with Pyrgus or her father. Just threatening, that’s all—the sort of thing people like Chalkhill did when they couldn’t have their own way.

  She wondered what had happened to Chalkhill when the Forest Faerie had demolished Hairstreak’s mansion.

  If Mr Fogarty was surprised to see Blue in the middle of the night, he didn’t show it. He stood, dressed in a weird nightcap and gown, looking, she thought, more like a wizard than the wizards of the Realm.

  ‘Yes,’ he said in answer to her question. ‘The Forest Faerie found him. They released him to my custody and I sent him back to Asloght.’

  ‘The jail?’

  ‘He has the rest of his sentence to serve. Lord Hairstreak sprung him on a ruse.’

  She’d never heard the term sprung him but decided it must mean that Hairstreak had released Chalkhill illegally. ‘I need to see him.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes.’ She waited for him to
point out it was the middle of the night.

  ‘Let me get some clothes on and I’ll take you,’ Mr Fogarty said.

  Ninety-Six

  ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ said Clutterbuck, ‘but there’s people to see you. I told them you had company.’

  They’d given him back his old cell, but despite the comfortable bed, Chalkhill couldn’t sleep. He’d been lying looking at the ceiling and talking to Cyril. ‘I don’t have company,’ he said.

  ‘Liar!’ the wyrm whispered inside his mind.

  Clutterbuck looked around. ‘So you don’t, sir thought I heard you talking to somebody,’ he said easily. ‘Shall I show them in?’

  Chalkhill pushed himself upright. ‘Who is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Princess Blue and Gatekeeper Fogarty.’

  Chalkhill was on guard at once. It could be his release, but it could just as easily be trouble. He’d have to play this very cautiously indeed.

  ‘Yes, show them in,’ he said.

  Blue eyed Jasper Chalkhill with distaste. He’d lost a little weight, but apart from that he was the same obnoxious, painted piece of slime he’d always been. ‘I’ve come to ask you a question,’ she said without preliminary.

  Chalkhill smiled at her. Even in jail he’d managed to get hold of his ghastly magical mouthpaste so that his teeth flashed and sparkled like tinsel. ‘Yes, of course, my dear.’

  She bit back the urge to tell him not to call her my dear. This was a difficult, delicate mission and there was no sense in antagonising him. ‘Dismiss your Trinian,’ she said bluntly.

  ‘Clutterbuck is here to protect me in case of attack,’ Chalkhill protested.

  ‘Who do you think is going to attack you, Mr Chalkhill? Me?’

  Chalkhill’s eyes wandered over to Mr Fogarty, who was standing with his back against the door.