‘Perhaps we need not go that way,’ offered Phineas with faint hope.
‘The parasols are there,’ said Ilsevel.
There was, indeed, a cluster of delicate mushrooms poised at the edge of the shadows. They clambered up the trees in airy profusion, and Phineas could well imagine that they spread over the ground beneath the mist as well. They were velvet indeed, mossy-furred in bejewelled shades of purple and blue, and their spreading caps resembled a profusion of diminutive ladies’ parasols opened up against the sun.
Permitting himself a small sigh, Phineas drew himself up in readiness. ‘Of course they are,’ he said. ‘Where else would they be?’
Nothing about the misty copse struck Phineas as obviously dangerous; he could not have said why the sight of it made his heart quicken its pace, or sent a stab of unease lancing through his guts. That Ilsevel felt it too was evident in the way she drew herself up, tossed back her hair, and strode forward with the purposeful walk of a woman determined, at any cost, not to appear afraid.
Phineas hastened to keep pace with her.
When they had got within three steps of the velvet queen parasols, a voice spoke. It was a darkly glittering voice, a slithering voice, a voice of velvet and wine laced with thorns. ‘My lady,’ it said.
Ilsevel froze.
‘Why, you have brought me a gift,’ continued the voice, with a deep chuckle. Shadows unfurled in coiling tendrils and reached for Phineas’s feet; with a thrill of horror he realised that, in speaking of a gift, the voice had been referring to him.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘He is no such thing,’ said Ilsevel, charging herself to speak clearly, and without fear, for to show herself afraid would be a grave mistake.
‘Then you come to offer yourself?’ said the voice, and shadows flowed over Ilsevel’s feet. They were cold and damp, like old pondwater, and she suppressed a strong desire to back away. ‘Better and better.’
‘Of course not,’ she snapped. ‘You forget yourself. You forget your place.’
‘And what,’ whispered the voice, ‘is my place now, Lady Silver?’
Phineas drew nearer, though whether he sought to offer or seek protection she could not have said. ‘You know this — this — creature?’ he hissed.
She did. There was no mistaking that voice. ‘It has been many years,’ she said, hoping Phineas would be satisfied with so brief an answer.
He was not. ‘Who is it? What is it?’
Something chuckled darkly, and the mist thickened and rose. ‘They used to call me Blight. Darksworn. Shadow’s End.’
‘A host of absurd names,’ Ilsevel agreed.
‘But fitting,’ said the voice. ‘I served your family well, My Lady Silver. Do I not deserve a reward?’
‘Your life is your reward,’ she said crisply. ‘Such as it is.’
The fog retreated a little, taking the shadows with it. They left in their wake an expanse of parched grass, dried to a husk, as though the life had been sucked out of it. A cluster of parasol mushrooms lay limply among them, withered and dead. ‘You are ungenerous, princess,’ chided the voice.
‘How did this serve your family?’ Phineas said, staring wide-eyed at the destruction.
‘It was long ago,’ Ilsevel sighed. ‘Hundreds of years, Phineas. Those were… different days, and some of my ancestors were not so gentle as my sister, nor so wise. They used the Shadow’s End as — as a form of punishment.’
‘Justice,’ whispered the voice.
Ilsevel ignored that. ‘It was kept at Court, beneath the palace-at-Mirramay, and those who… displeased the king, or the queen, were sent as…’
‘Gifts,’ said the voice silkily.
Ilsevel sighed. ‘It was still there when Anthelaena ascended the throne. Starved and weakened and resentful, but alive — after a fashion. She disposed of it, though I never did gather how, or where it was dispatched to.’
The wreathing fog developed a greenish tinge. ‘She imprisoned me, but I… escaped.’
That interested Ilsevel. ‘I am persuaded you could not. Evade the power of the seated monarch? How, pray?’
‘All things are possible,’ hissed the voice, ‘with the right help.’
‘Who helped you?’ Ilsevel spoke sharply, alarmed, for the prospect boded very ill indeed.
But the voice was silent.
Phineas said, ‘What are you doing here, Blight?’
‘Guarding,’ whispered Darksworn.
‘Guarding what?’
Again, there was no answer — not in words. But the fog and the shadows retreated a little more, exposing a pair of trees, dead at the roots, their trunks covered in rotting parasol mushrooms.
‘Whoever freed it is no friend to your family,’ Phineas said softly.
‘Then it is none too difficult to guess at the identity of its preserver.’ The Kostigern would find the Darksworn, in all its resentment and hunger, a natural ally.
But did that mean that their enemy had known that Anthelaena had not died? Had the Kostigern discovered Wodebean’s ploy, and Tyllanthine’s, and sought to block the queen’s return?
Had that been why Tyllanthine had been cursed?
Her thoughts roiled with speculation and possibility, not untinged with fear. Resolutely, she called them to order; now was not the time. ‘Friend or not,’ she said, a note of steel creeping in to her voice, ‘it must still obey me.’
‘I must not,’ said the Blight, and a foul, grating laugh shivered through the fog. ‘The Pact between your family and mine is broken, princess.’
‘Then we shall bargain,’ said Ilsevel, betraying none of her dismay. ‘Whatever your preserver offered to you, I shall better it.’
‘You cannot.’
‘What were you promised?’
‘My old position restored,’ whispered the Blight. ‘My condition bettered. My hunger sated. More gifts, princess, from your world and beyond. A kingdom all my own…’
‘This is to be your kingdom, is it?’ said Ilsevel with scorn, indicating the confines of Autumn’s Hollow with a sweep of her arm. ‘It is a prison.’
‘It is a beginning,’ said the Blight. ‘I await his ascension, for the rest.’
‘To the throne? You will wait forever, for your faithless preserver is gone.’
The shadows shifted; the fog roiled. ‘That is a lie.’
‘It is not. You are tricked, Blight. This place is in Torpor. Time has passed you by, and you do not even know it. The worlds beyond have moved on. Decades have passed, and he who sought the throne is vanished.’
‘And what became of him?’ The words emerged as a faint whisper, so faint she had to strain her ears to catch them.
‘That is not known.’
A chuckle again, long and low. ‘Then it is you who are tricked, princess. He is not gone. He waits, and he will return.’
‘And you will wait forever, will you, on the mere chance of it?’
‘I am more ancient than you can imagine. What are years, to one such as me?’
Phineas moved, all at once. She had received no warning of his intent; he had given no sign of his plans. He was gone from her side and into the fog, moving at speed, the scarf she had herself wound around his neck now pulled up to half-cover his face.
Shadows swallowed him.
‘Phineas!’ she cried — too late, too late. She heard a cry.
‘Fool boy,’ chuckled the Blight. ‘Delicious boy.’
Her stunned wits recovering, Ilsevel gathered herself and went after him. But here he was already stumbling out again, coming towards her with the shambling gait of an old, old man. He extended a hand; she reached for it, but instead of clasping her fingers he dropped into her grasp something soft and delicate. A velvet queen parasol — no, two. Sound and whole and plump, their colours untouched, they glittered faintly in the light.
‘Phineas,’ she gasped, barely pausing to store the precious mushrooms before she caught him up. ‘What have you done?’
‘The
Blight is here to guard, not to destroy,’ he said, and she did not like the weakness in his voice. ‘They are most of them intact.’
Shadowy tendrils reached for Phineas, grown darker, angrier; Ilsevel hastily drew him farther away. ‘And at what price have you gathered these?’
It was the Darksworn who answered her. ‘Not enough,’ it growled. ‘Slippery boy, come closer again! You are the price I claim for My Lady Silver’s treasures!’
Phineas was shaking all over. He staggered on, farther away from the shadowed copse, and Ilsevel supported him as best she could. ‘What has it done to you?’ she demanded.
‘I do not know,’ gasped Phineas, though she could see for herself some part of the cost of his actions, for the hand that had held the mushrooms was no longer young and strong. The fingers, clasped so firmly and tenderly within her own, were thin and frail; his skin was parchment, wrinkled and time-stained. Had he lingered much longer, he must have lost the whole.
‘It has taken some of your life,’ she said grimly. ‘It shall be made to return it, my Phineas!’ So saying, she turned back, and would have marched at once to wrangle with the Darksworn.
But Phineas caught at her dress with his undamaged hand, and his grip was still strong. ‘No,’ he said, breathless but firm. ‘You cannot defeat it, Lady Silver. Not yet. You must let it go.’
‘It ought to have been me,’ she said coldly, and tore herself from his grasp. ‘You shall not pay this price, Phineas. This debt is not yours to settle.’
He spoke only one word, but it was enough to slow her, enough to cease her reckless march. ‘Please,’ he said.
She sighed, and turned. He had not the strength to stand unaided, and had sunk down into the road. He made a sorry figure, his young face white and drawn. There were wrinkles around his eyes that had not been there before. ‘I must,’ she said, but there was a pleading note to her words that could only undermine them.
‘No,’ said Phineas. ‘It is done, and for the best. I don’t regret it.’
Ilsevel went back to him, and helped him to his feet. ‘You need help.’
He swayed, and almost fell again. ‘Please.’
They had regained the road by this time, or what was left of it. Ilsevel said, her arms full of Phineas, ‘Good road, if there are kind souls left in this cursed place, pray take us to them.’
The vivid trees shimmered around them, and rushed away. When the world slowed again, they stood before a timber-framed cottage, a barrow full of freshly-dug vegetables standing ready beside its front door. The proprietor, an Aylir woman of some age, looked up in surprise. She had an embroidered scarf over her wispy grey hair, and her frame was bundled up in coats and shawls against the frosty chill in the air.
‘I beg you,’ said Ilsevel without preamble, for Phineas was growing heavier in her arms, his legs less and less able to support him. ‘If you have food to spare, and a bed for my friend, I shall be everything that is grateful.’
The woman looked Phineas over, and nodded. ‘The fog?’
‘It was that, yes.’
‘Ought not to have gone in.’ The woman shook her head, but she was already moving towards her cottage door. ‘I’ve a stew on the simmer, it will be ready now. And bread in the oven.’ Ilsevel’s nose had already alerted her to these details, the moment the door opened, and her stomach duly informed her that it had been hungry for some time.
Within a few minutes, she was seated in a whitewashed chamber at the back of the little cottage, Phineas prone in the narrow bed beside her, and both busy upon the bowls of steaming stew the good woman had put into their hands. She had even found a nightgown for Phineas, and had heaped the bed with extra blankets.
Phineas ate like a man who had not seen food for a week. This heartened Ilsevel, for she could well believe that the Blight had taken the nourishment from Phineas’s limbs; food was what he needed.
When he had eaten everything he had been given, and half of her portion as well (freely donated by Ilsevel), she said: ‘You were a fool.’
Phineas only smiled. As worn and strained as he looked, there was an air of happiness about him that Ilsevel could not understand — an air, even, of serenity. His eyes closed, and he slept.
Quietly, Ilsevel stole away.
She found their hostess in the kitchen, hard at work upon a bucketful of potatoes. She was giving them a sound scrubbing, but she looked up when Ilsevel came in. ‘And how is the young man?’
‘Very grateful for your care, as am I. He’s eaten the lot, and I am sure it will do him good. He’s sleeping now.’
‘You look in need of a kip yourself.’ She turned back to her work, brisk and cheerful, the thick bristles of her scrubbing-brush swish-swishing loudly in the stillness.
Ilsevel wondered when she had last slept a night through, and could not remember. ‘May I know your name?’ she said, passing the point over.
‘I am Eleri.’
‘Ilsevel. Are there… are there others here?’
‘To be sure there are,’ said Eleri briskly. ‘Not so many as once there were, perhaps, but enough.’
‘Enough for?’
‘To work the fields. To keep the sun rising every morning. Here.’ She filled Ilsevel’s hands with potatoes, pointed her to the table, and set a small knife down there.
Ilsevel dutifully began to peel, albeit clumsily. ‘Where do they go, the ones who have left?’
‘Haven’t left, precisely. Folk pass on, sometimes.’
And Wodebean, apparently, was bringing no one new in. Was that because of the Darksworn? Did he even know that the Blight was there?
Ilsevel wanted to ask if Eleri was happy, but she was forestalled by a question from the Aylir woman. ‘What was it you and yonder young fellow were doing, wandering those roads?’
‘Passing through,’ said Ilsevel vaguely.
No reply. When Ilsevel glanced up, she found herself fixed with an uncompromising stare.
‘It is the truth,’ she protested. ‘We are looking for Gilligold.’
‘Him?’ said Eleri. ‘What manner of fools are you?’
‘Our need is urgent, I assure you, or we should gladly abandon this quest.’
‘What need have you for gold, or jewels, as could justify the journey?’
‘It is a matter of some very particular jewels, which he has purloined from a… friend of mine, and which are urgently required.’
‘You’ll not find him.’ Eleri went back to her scrubbing, swish, swish.
‘We are determined.’
Eleri shook her head. ‘Old as the Hollows, that one, and twice as wily. He’s hidden the door so well, none now remember where it was.’
‘It is said that all the Hollows in these parts are connected to one another, or at least that one may go from one to another with ease enough, if one has the means. I have found this to be true.’
‘Bypass the door?’ That gave Eleri pause. ‘What manner of power have you, to need no doors?’
It was Ilsevel’s turn to hold her silence. After a moment, Eleri turned, and subjected Ilsevel’s calm countenance to a close scrutiny.
She had not, perhaps, paid close attention to Ilsevel before, distracted by Phineas’s pitiable state, and then by her own labours. Now she saw Ilsevel clearly.
A potato fell back into the bucket with a plop.
‘Perhaps you’ve a chance,’ she said.
‘I am hoping so.’
Eleri shook herself, and turned back to her bucket. Questions hovered palpably about her, but she had resolution enough to voice none of them. ‘I believe I’ve a message for you,’ was all that she said.
‘For me?’
‘If you are Lady Silver, aye.’
‘Then I will claim the message. What is it?’
‘Seek the rose, ware the thorn.’
Turning it over in her mind, Ilsevel could not wring any particular sense from it. But she committed it carefully to memory nonetheless. ‘And who has left it for me?’
‘A m
an in a pale cloak. I never saw his face, nor learned his name.’
A disquieting answer; nonplussed, Ilsevel put aside the many questions it conjured for another time. ‘I thank you,’ she said, formally acknowledging receipt. ‘And I thank you, again, for your care of me, and of my friend.’
Eleri merely nodded. ‘Shall you sleep a little?’
Ilsevel gladly put down the knife, and her half-peeled potato. ‘Thank you. I believe I shall.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘I seek a grub,’ called Hidenory, or as she was truly named, Tyllanthine. ‘A worm. A maggot. The filth that crawls in the dark, the dirt-eating wretch, the miserable specimen of fae-kind that calls himself Oleander Whiteboots.’
She had asked this question time and time again, though the query itself had become increasingly embroidered with unflattering epithets as the days had passed. Unbelievably, she had got nowhere. She had crossed Gadrahst from east to west, gone into the very heart of the Goblin King’s Court itself, enlisted His Majesty’s aid — even begged assistance from the absurd human-girl he had the temerity to name consort, though she was as low-born as it was possible to be — and for what! Few claimed any acquaintance with the fellow, and those who did denied having seen or heard from him. Circulating his description proved of little benefit either, for Redcaps were not so rare as all that, and what was particularly distinctive about a Redcap in a bright cloak? He was proving as elusive as Wodebean, and Tyllanthine had long since lost patience with that.
Perhaps the troll was right. If Whiteboots had ceased to consider himself a denizen of Aylfenhame and gone into England, then she was on a fine goose chase indeed. Were that the case, Balligumph would find him.
But Tyllanthine was not so sure. Where would a weasel like Whiteboots go? If he was not to be found in Aylfenhame, then he would do as Wodebean had done, and many another before them both: he would disappear into the Hollows. Those Hills were the cracks between the worlds, the lawless wilds where anything might be permitted to pass. In the absence of the monarch, Aylfenhame itself was increasingly sliding into a similar chaos — but a king still ruled in Gadrahst, and the land remembered Anthelaena, however long she had been gone.
Mr Drake and My Lady Silver Page 20