'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 bad 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.'
CHAPTER 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.
CHAPTER 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 mouth paste so that his teeth flashed an
d 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.
Blue said, 'Oh, for heaven's sake!' She turned to Mr Fogarty. 'Would you leave us, Gatekeeper - I'll be fine.'
Mr Fogarty nodded. 'I'll be just outside if you need me.'
Chalkhill's smile returned and this time it actually reached his eyes, which glittered with a sort of pleased malevolence. 'You can go, Clutterbuck,' he said.
As soon as they were alone, Blue said, 'The chances are you'll be a guest of Asloght for a long time, Mr Chalkhill, perhaps even for the rest of your life. But if I were to have a word with my brother, it's possible your term of sentence might be shortened. Do we understand one another, Mr Chalkhill?'
'Perfectly, Serenity,' Chalkhill said with a peculiar flash in his eye. 'What do you want me to do?'
'Just tell me what happened in the operating theatre.'
Chalkhill looked at her blankly.
'Why were you there and what happened -' she hesitated, but only for a heartbeat, '- what happened to my father?'
'Ah,' Chalkhill said.
After a moment, Blue said, 'Well ... ?'
Chalkhill licked his lips. 'This, ah, reduction of my sentence ... You say you would be willing to speak to your brother - your brother Pyrgus - about it?'
'Yes.'
'Do you think he would be ... sympathetic?'
'I can't give you guarantees, but I think he might.'
'What happens if he isn't?'
Blue turned and knocked on the door. 'I'm ready to leave!' she called.
'No, just a minute,' Chalkhill said quickly. 'There's no need to be like that. Of course I'll tell you. Why wouldn't I? If I can be of any help, any help at all, to any member of our illustrious royal -'
'Get on with it,' Blue warned.
He seemed to come to a decision. 'Very well. The operation. Lord Hairstreak found he could not control your father as effectively as he wished. The Purple Emperor was - is - was a man of strong and noble will. Even in death he was too much for Lord Hairstreak. The operation was an attempt to increase the level of control by interfering with your father's brain.'
'How?'
Chalkhill licked his lips. 'He was going to - he tried to - to reconnect the neural pathways in a different order.'
Blue stared at him with distaste. 'Why did he cut my father's head off?'
'That was a mistake,' Chalkhill said. 'Entirely a mistake - a ghastly mistake. Lord Hairstreak hired this ... primitive to carry out the operation. Mountain Clouded Yellow. Can you imagine a more ridiculous name? Dreadful man, but a very powerful psychic surgeon. I gather he came well recommended, despite his failings. The trouble was, he had too high an opinion of himself - too cocky by half. The most important connections were at the brain stem and he decided to access them through the neck. He believed he could reconnect the head afterwards.' Chalkhill's face took on a sorrowful expression. 'But he couldn't. Lord Hairstreak would have killed him, if your people hadn't done it first.'
'So it was this ... this Mountain Clouded Yellow who cut my father's head off?'
'Yes.'
'No one else?'
'No, Serenity, of course not. Who would want to?'
Blue said, 'One final question. What was your part in the operation? Why were you there, Mr Chalkhill?'
'Blood donor,' Chalkhill told her promptly. 'I happen to be the same blood type as your illustrious father. I was on hand simply in case of an emergency; and delighted to be of any possible help to your father, of course.' He looked at Blue earnestly. 'But in the event he was beyond my help.'
Blue stared at him for a moment, then said, 'Thank you. Thank you, Mr Chalkhill. You've been ... helpful.' She knocked behind her on the door and it opened at once.
As she moved to leave, Chalkhill called out, 'You'll tell your brother what I said, won't you? You'll tell him exactly?'
He was lying. She was certain of it. The question was why? Except she had a feeling she already knew the answer - or at least knew somebody who knew the answer.
Mr Fogarty asked curtly, 'Satisfactory?'
'In a way,' Blue said.
'Where are we going now?'
'Back to the palace,' Blue said. 'I want to talk to Pyrgus.'
CHAPTER NINETY SEVEN
'Don't lie to me!' Blue screamed. 'I've been up all night and I've talked to that beastly Chalkhill and I can't take any more!'
Pyrgus looked a little better. His arm was bandaged and there were more bandages wrapping his chest and stomach underneath his shirt, but his colour was good except for the dark rings around his eyes. Maybe he hadn't had much sleep either.
'Blue, I -' Pyrgus said. 'Listen, it was all very confused. I don't think any of us will ever find out what really -'
'Comma has been making up stories about you,' Blue said. 'I don't believe him, but I don't believe you either. I just want to know the truth!'
'What's Comma been saying?' Pyrgus asked sharply.
'That you cut - that you cut off -' She just couldn't finish. Suddenly she was so tired she could scarcely stand up.
Pyrgus turned away from her. 'Do you believe that?'
'No, of course I don't. But I talked to Chalkhill and he lied to me - I know he lied to me. What I don't know is why!'
Pyrgus said very softly, 'He lied to you because I told him I'd arrange his freedom if he did.'
'You told him that? Why would you want to arrange his freedom?'
Pyrgus sighed. 'It was bribe him or kill him, and I couldn't do any more killing.'
Blue was looking at him open-mouthed. 'I don't understand you, Pyrgus. I don't understand any of this.'
Pyrgus said, 'It wasn't Hairstreak who resurrected Father. It was me.'
Blue stared at her brother in stunned disbelief. They had retired to the garden chamber where their father had once tended his orchids and the room was heavy with their scent. Spell reinforcement made it one of the most private places in the Purple Palace. 'You did what?' she gasped.
Pyrgus looked physically ill. 'I was afraid to become Emperor,' he said.
'Afraid?
'You know how useless I am at that sort of thing -politics and negotiations and diplomacy. I'd even be useless trying to run the Army. The Realm would fall apart with me as Purple Emperor. Worse, it would fall to the Nighters. There would be wars and chaos and -'
Blue said incredulously, 'So you resurrected Our father?'
Pyrgus nodded miserably. 'I didn't know what else to do.'
'Have you any idea how illegal that is? How dreadful that is? How ... how ... forbidden that is?'
Pyrgus nodded again. He was seated hunched over on a bench and looked as if he might be sick on the floor.
'How could you?' Blue asked. 'How could you?' A thought occurred to her and she added, 'How did you?'
'Went to a necromancer,' Pyrgus muttered.
'A Nighter?' It had to be a Nighter! No Faerie of the Light would touch the dark magic involved in raising the dead.
'Yes.'
'Have you no sense?' Blue demanded. Pyrgus looked almost suicidal and in any other circumstance that would have made her want to comfort him, but there was a feeling of panic in her now that ran away with her tongue. 'Didn't you know a necromancer could control anyone he raised? That's what went wrong. It was bound to go wrong. You had to know it would go wrong!'
Pyrgus shook his head helplessly.
Her anger had carried her this far, but now the enormity of what Pyrgus had done was really beginning to dawn on her. She'd never made a profound study of magic, but she knew enough to realise that nec
romancy - sorceries involving the dead - was something ten times worse than the techniques of demonology that Faeries of the Night employed so often.
'You'd better tell me everything,' she said.
Faerie Wars 02 - The Purple Emperor Page 29