The town looked hauntingly normal, chillingly eerie. It had been almost fourteen years since the townspeople had vanished, but it still looked as if they had only gone to visit friends, rather than overgrown and lost to nature. None of the inner buildings had fallen down, or even been looted; the people who had visited the town in the aftermath of the disappearance had reported that they hadn’t been able to stay for long in the place. It was as if Mannington itself had decided to drive everyone else out of the area. I walked down the main street, trying not to look too closely into the shadows. I didn’t want to know what might be hiding in the darkness…
And there was something behind me. At first, I thought that it was just another ghost, lurking at the edge of perception, but it was real. I reached out carefully with my senses, taking pains not to reveal that I knew that something was wrong, and felt the edge of an invisibility spell. It wasn't a perfect spell, cast by someone without much experience of practical magic, but it was very well done. If I had relied on magic alone, instead of my finely-honed senses, I would have missed it completely. The soldiers at the checkpoint had definitely missed it. Someone was following me.
I lifted one hand, as if I intended to scratch my ear, and snapped my fingers. The paralysis spell leapt from my fingers and hit the person, shaped in my mind. It was an easy spell to use; after all, I’d had plenty of practice. The person hit the ground with an audible thud, taken completely by surprise themselves, and I turned around. I was surprised to see that the spell hadn’t broken under my attack. The only sign that someone was there was the faint indentation in the ground.
“All right,” I said, bending over where I knew the person had to be. “Let’s see who you are…”
The spell was a fairly easy one to dispel. I focused my mind, disrupted the field, and watched as the person shimmered into view. I had expected to see a hippy from the commune, someone who intended to slip through into the Faerie Mound, but instead I saw Aylia Faye, Cecilia’s sister. I stared at her, unable to believe my eyes. What the hell was she doing here? Her brown eyes met mine, silently pleading. The spell I’d caught her with prevented any kind of voluntary movement and she had to know that she was trapped. By rights, I should have carried her back to the soldiers and handed her over to them.
But I was curious. “I’m going to release the spell,” I said, slowly. “If you do anything stupid, I’m going to have to arrest you for trespassing in a restricted zone and interfering with Guardian activities.” I concentrated and undid the spell. “What are you doing here?”
Aylia sat up slightly, rubbing her back. She’d hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, more than hard enough to hurt. She looked slight – I could have broken her in half with ease – and I felt a stab of guilt for hurting her, which I had to force down. If she possessed a command of magic, she was dangerous beyond anything her appearance suggested. I doubted that she could take me in a magical dual, but I resolved not to underestimate her. She was Vincent Faye’s daughter, after all…
“Following you,” she said, flatly. I was mildly impressed. Tracking someone though a teleport spell is not an easy task, although she had known where I was heading. I’d discussed it in her hearing. “I want to find my sister.”
Several emotions warred in my mind. Anger won. “You stupid…”
I caught myself and glared at her. “Why did you follow me?”
Her brown eyes met mine, silently beseeching. “I need to find her,” she said, her voice pleading. “I need her back, Guardian.”
“Do you,” I growled. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Oh, I believed her when she said she wanted to find her sister, but she had to be insane. Didn’t she have any idea how dangerous the Faerie were? I decided to ask her. “Do you have any experience with the Faerie?”
“No,” she said, “but I’ve read all about them and…”
“You’ve read all about them,” I repeated. If she hadn’t been so earnest, I would have laughed in her face. No writer, even one properly primed with a series of designer drugs, could capture what the Faerie were in a book. The written word wouldn’t suffice to describe even a tiny section of what they were, let alone their complex social codes and their complete disdain for all things human. “And, my dear, what part of what you’ve read all about them tells you that your presence here will be helpful?”
Aylia glared at me. “The books said that the Faerie respected families,” she said. “I thought that if I slipped into the Mound, I would be able to convince them to take me to my sister, maybe even convince them to let her go.” Her mouth tightened. “I won’t leave her there, I won’t…”
I opened my mouth to launch a scathing retort, and paused. She was right, in a sense; the Faerie might be more well-disposed to a family member than a Guardian. On the other hand, not all of their insanely complicated laws and codes of conduct applied to all Faerie Mounds and Aylia’s book might have been talking about a completely different subset of Faerie. I had considered asking Vincent along, but I hadn’t wanted to take someone like him into the Mound. A man used to getting his own way at all times would have a nasty surprise if he tried to bully the Faerie. The only way to deal with them was to be very diplomatic.
“You don’t have any experience,” I said, slowly. Perhaps I was being stupid – no, I knew I was being stupid – but I was considering her idea. I should take her back to the soldiers, or leave her in Mannington until I returned, but she might be useful. “I know far more than you do about the Faerie…”
I shook my head. “I ought to spank you and send you back home,” I snapped. Aylia flushed angrily. “Does your father even know you’re here?”
“No,” Aylia said, softly. “He’s worried about the baby” – I would hardly have described a four-year-old as a baby, but I held my peace – “and my sister keeps distracting him from looking for her. She wants all the attention from the reporters and everyone who’s come to visit and express their insincere sympathies…”
“I see,” I said. I held her eyes until she lowered them. “Listen carefully. The Faerie are not human, understand that. The least of the Faerie is far less human than any vampire or werewolf – or a dragon, for that matter. They come from a species that's so different from ours that the only reason we can imagine there are common factors is because magic translates their presence into something we can see, and convince ourselves that we understand. That’s not what they are. They don't have an ethical system that bears any resemblance to any human ethical system. They don't see us as equals. Understand that, if nothing else. They have codes and strictures we can’t understand the point of, and they're lax in areas we can't imagine why they think they have the right to be. When you look at a Faerie, you’re looking at a representation, not a real form.”
I placed a hand under her chin and lifted her head so she was looking right at me. “We’re going into their world, where we will have to abide by their rules,” I added. “Think about going into another country, perhaps Japan or Iran, as a diplomat. We are going to be facing powerful beings that are different! They are not human, Aylia, and they don’t care about us. If we make a single mistake, they will have us; understand?”
She nodded, slowly. “If I take you with me – if – you have to promise, now, to do exactly as I say at all times, without any hesitation. You have to obey the rules at all times, whatever happens, whatever you see or hear…or think you see or hear. They will be watching us at all times. If we break their rules…”
“I promise,” Aylia said. She stepped back from me, breaking contact. “I will swear it by my name, if you so ask, but just take me with you.”
I had to smile. She was so…earnest. I wondered if she felt uneasy at her offer; any magic-user who swears on their name had better not break that oath. The consequences are unpleasant. She was offering to bind herself to me so strongly that she would do anything I asked her to do. I pushed the thought back and concentrated. She had to understand what I was telling her.
“A
ll right,” I said. Wilkinson would throw a fit over my decision, but she had volunteered to come along. “When we’re in the Mound, there are four rules that you must remember and follow at all times. Do not eat or drink anything, no matter how hungry you become, unless they give it freely and without obligation. In fact, do not eat anything without my permission. Do not take anything they offer you, no matter what it is, unless that too is given freely and without obligation. Don’t steal anything either, ever. Do not leave the path, for anything, no matter what you see or hear. And, finally, be extremely polite to everyone inside the Mound. They will try to tempt you, or provoke you, just for their amusements. If you fall into their traps, you will be theirs for a long time, perhaps forever. No one, not even the combined force of every Guardian on the planet, will be able to force them to release you.”
Aylia winced. “If you want to remain here, I can leave you with the soldiers,” I concluded. “If not, come on. We’ve already wasted too much time.”
I turned and walked towards the Mound. After a moment, I heard her following me.
Chapter Eleven
There was something about the eyes. It wasn't the shape or the colour. There was no evil glint. But there was... ... a look. It was such a look that a microbe might encounter if it could see up from the bottom end of the microscope. It said: You are nothing. It said: You are flawed, you have no value. It said: You are animal. It said: Perhaps you may be a pet, or perhaps you may be a quarry. It said: And the choice is not yours.
-Terry Pratchett
The Mound was suddenly there, right in front of us.
Mere words couldn’t describe it, as I had said, and I heard Aylia gasp as she finally saw a Mound in real life. Whatever she’d learned from her father – and, if she had been able to follow me and cast an invisibility spell, she’d learned plenty – it would have been focused on human magic. The wild magic ahead of us was something else, something so different that I wanted to flee, despite all my training. I half-expected Aylia to refuse to go any further – I’ve seen brave men, who laugh in the face of danger, refuse to go close to a Mound – but she merely looked paler than normal.
“It’s massive,” she breathed, and then she stopped. I knew what she had seen and waited for her to try to put it into words. “Guardian…how high is it?”
“Good question,” I said, amused. The Mound couldn’t be much higher than a small hill, but it seemed to rise endlessly into the sky. It also seemed to be barely higher than my head. I’ve seen people go mad, their minds unable to grasp the concept, staring at the Mounds. The contradiction – the two heights couldn’t be both true – could only be explained by a single word. Magic. “Let’s just leave it that the Mound is far bigger on the inside than the outside, all right?”
She nodded, shaking. A moment later, I felt a small hand slip into mine. “If you want to wait for me,” I said, not unkindly, “this is pretty much your last chance. Once we enter the Mound, we’re committed.”
“I won’t go back now,” Aylia said, firmly. She looked up at the Mound’s towering immensity again. “How do we get in?”
“We walk,” I said, amused. She hadn’t let go of my hand. “Come on, then.”
The Mound looked, at first, like a small hill, covered in grass and little else. As we stepped forwards, I saw other things as well, hints and suggestions of half-seen nightmares crawling all over the little hill. I felt Aylia tremble as more and more things shimmered into visibility, but there was no going back now. I concentrated, closing down my magical senses for the duration. The sheer level of magic inside the Mound would be enough to make my merely-human senses useless. There were theories that the Faerie did that deliberately, as a defensive mechanism, but I didn’t believe them. The Faerie have never shown any inclination to believe that we might be a threat to them. Why would they even bother?
And then we were standing on a grassy plain, a path below our feet. I heard Aylia gasp as she saw what she was seeing – Faerie looks different to everyone – and smiled to myself. I’d have bet good money that whatever her books had told her, she hadn’t even been remotely prepared for the reality. There was no horizon, no sense of curvature in the ground; it was as if we were standing on a completely flat Earth. The landscape of Faerie is mutable at the will of its inhabitants. They could make it anything they wanted. They could also have taken us right to the Queen, but instead they wanted to make us walk, just to remind us how lowly we were in their eyes. I’d told Aylia to assume that there was nothing human about them, but considering them to be the worst kind of aristocrats – as in ‘the poor are poor because they have bad blood’ - wasn't too far wrong. Hitler, compared to them, was little more than mildly maladjusted.
I looked over at Aylia. She looked more vital, more feminine, in the strange light. “Don’t be too scared,” I said, calmly. She was still holding my hand. “What are you seeing?”
“A beach,” she said, puzzled. “Why is it a beach?”
“I have no idea,” I said, truthfully. There is a theory that states that Faerie’s appearance is determined by the viewer’s own mind. “You’ll always be able to see the path, so remember…don’t walk off it, understand?”
She nodded. “Come on,” I said. I didn’t want to spend too much time in Faerie. It was a seductive environment and it only became more seductive the longer you spent in it. “Remember the rules and you’ll be fine.”
We walked down the path slowly, hand in hand. There was no real sense of motion, even in my body. It was as if I was merely imagining that we were walking, rather than actually moving. The path seemed to go on forever – there was nothing, but grass around us – and it was hard to believe that we would ever find an end. It was an eerie dreamlike state. I kept tight hold of her hand, watching her carefully. If she started to allow the landscape to hypnotise her we would be in deep shit. Perversely, watching her so closely kept me focused myself, but I still had to fight off the effect.
“Oh,” Aylia said, suddenly. We had nearly walked right into the Faerie. The landscape had changed suddenly around us without us noticing. It was now a typical checkpoint, rather like the one outside the Mound, populated by four Faerie. They were lower-caste Faerie, creatures barely more than a few steps above us, but they wouldn’t see it that way. “Guardian, I…”
She staggered and went down on one knee. I reached out and held her as she shook against me. Blood was pouring from her eyes and I hoped that it was just a metaphor. In Faerie, nothing is what is seems and you can’t take anything for granted. Aylia had seen the Faerie and her mind had tried to see them as they really were. The effect had been shocking. Mortal minds simply cannot perceive them and tried to do so can cause madness, or death.
“It’s all right,” I said, as gently as I could. She was whimpering quietly, one hand trying to rub her eyes. I caught that hand and held it. It would do her no good. “It’s all right. You’ll have time to recover.”
The Faerie looked unmoving, but I was sure that they were doing their equivalent of pointing and laughing at her. I ignored them for the moment, concentrating on Aylia. “Don’t look at them directly,” I ordered, still holding her. She felt weak and frail against my body. “Look at them out of the corner of your eye and let them take on shape and form. Don’t try to force them into your perceptions. Let them do it for you.”
She looked up slowly. The blood had vanished and her eyes looked normal. “They’re…they’re…”
“It’s all right,” I repeated. She stumbled, but with my help was able to stand up, even though she was leaning against me. “Just take deep breathes and allow your mind to accept them. You’re doing fine.”
The lead Faerie stepped forward. At first, he looked perfectly human, but as he came closer, it was easy to see that he was anything, but. His face was birdlike, very sharp, very pale…and very cruel. His ears were pointed, sticking up under a shock of dark unkempt hair, and he wore a suit of golden armour. He was inhumanly perfect, but I didn’t dare look too
closely. I knew that if I tried the illusion would melt away and I’d be in the same boat as Aylia, left on the verge of collapse. The remaining Faerie were just vague after-images. I didn’t want to look at them at all.
“Mortal creatures of flesh and blood, in our realm,” he said, as if he was addressing his fellows. His bearing put me in mind of a typical street thug, attempting to undermine his prey through words, but no street thug had ever commanded such power. He would kill us both if we put a foot wrong. “Why are you polluting our realm with your filthy stench?”
The sneer in his voice made my blood boil, but I pushed the reflex aside. This was no place to get angry. “Honoured Faerie,” I said, in a tone that sounded like I was brown-nosing the creature, “We have come to visit the Queen of all Faerie Kind.”
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