The Road to Bedlam

by Mike Shevdon

  I missed the time on one, sending shock waves vibrating up my wrist, and reacted by turning and sliding the blade through the centre in a long thrust designed to impale before spinning around, letting the blade whistle out in a flat blur that whacked the tyre into a spin. I spun back to intercept and then let it spin.

  I had reached two hundred.

  The tyre wound down, turning one way then the other, as I went through a series of stretches and stances, letting my muscles recover slowly, using the effort to ease the tension between my shoulders and the tingling in my wrist.

  Tate had waited for me and took the practice sword with a grin. He wiped it over with a cloth and then inspected it for damage before returning it to its place on the rack. We walked in companionable silence through to the changing rooms. I stripped off gingerly and inspected the livid bruises I had accumulated through the day. My fey genes meant that they would be gone by tomorrow, only to be replaced by a fresh set.

  Tate shed his clothes and was already in the shower by the time I had my towel ready, his gravelly voice singing a song I didn't recognise about a fair maid whom he was trying to tempt with a variety of unlikely and sometimes grisly gifts.

  "Did you make that up?" I asked him, stepping under the cascade of hot water.

  He stopped singing. "Mostly not, though some of the verses are mine."

  "It's an unlikely courtship," I suggested. "What kind of girl wants a severed head as a betrothal gift?"

  "It's the head of her enemy, so I suppose it has its attractions." He shrugged.

  "It doesn't seem much like a love token."

  "She's a fey lass, so who knows what she wants?" Tate stepped past me, grinning, grabbed his towel and wrapped it around his waist.

  I had to admit, he had a point.

  I stayed under the hot water, letting the percussion and warmth ease my muscles while Tate went back into the changing room to get dry. After a few moments, his deeply resonant tone resumed the song.

  I thought of my own fey lass, waiting for me. I didn't think that she would welcome a severed head as a gift, but then she wasn't truly fey any more than I was. The true fey were altogether more strange.

  Not for the first time I shook my head at the turn my life had taken in the last nine months. My first encounter with the Feyre had been only the previous September when, having had a heart attack on the underground, I had been rescued by an old lady who had woken the fey magic within me to heal my failing heart.

  I shook my head and smiled. The old lady had turned out to be a lot older than she looked, though she had changed now so that she appeared to be in her midtwenties. She had become my guide, my mentor and eventually my lover and I had gambled my life in a trial by ordeal for her safety and that of my daughter.

  My daughter, Alex, had taken to Blackbird. I had hoped that they would get on well enough to bear each other's company, but I had found myself prodded into jealousy by the way they bonded. They would sit on the sofa, heads together, whispering to each other, and when challenged would tell me that it was nothing to concern me.

  When I'd asked Blackbird what they were talking about, I'd been told to mind my own business.

  "She's my daughter," I had protested.

  "All the more reason that you shouldn't ask."

  "Have you told her about me being fey?" I asked her.

  "No. You're her father. When the time is right, you should tell her."

  Blackbird left me with that thought. I'd held off telling Alex about the gifts I'd inherited from our unknown fey ancestor and the possibility that she would also inherit them. I reasoned that it was partly because I didn't really know whether it would happen or not, and partly because I dreaded what it might mean if it did.

  My own gifts came from my affinity with the void, an element that the Feyre believed separated one thing from another, preventing matter from collapsing in on itself. If Alex had inherited that from me then she would inherit the female form of the gift, an ability to become incorporeal, a ghostly shadow of herself, invulnerable to physical harm. She would also inherit darkspore, a corruption that she would be able to spread at will on any surface, allowing her to consume other beings and feed on their flesh.

  It wasn't the best news a father could give his daughter. I imagined her reaction, the curling of her lip in that peculiar way as she elongated 'eww' into a whine. I smiled at the thought, but it had kept me from telling her.

  It wasn't certain, though. I had also been told that humanity had introduced a random factor into the inheritance. The Feyre had long had problems with fertility. When they did have children they bred true, each to their element, their forms reflecting their differing affinities. When they discovered that the union between fey and human was fertile it caused a rift between those who believed that the union would save the Feyre from extinction and those who saw human-fey hybrids as an abomination, a corruption of their bloodlines. What neither the pure-bred Untainted nor the remaining factions of the Seven Courts had realised was that the human DNA somehow altered the mechanism of inheritance, meaning that there was no way to be sure what fey traits would be inherited. My hope was that maybe Alex would inherit some other gift, possibly fire and air like Blackbird rather than the grisly gifts of the void.

  In any case there was no way to tell. She would either find herself one day gifted with uncanny power, or she wouldn't. If she did, she would live an unnaturally long life. If she didn't, she would live a human lifespan and age and die long before I did, assuming that no one broke my neck with a wooden sword first.

  I dried myself and pulled on my jeans and T-shirt. I was not allowed the charcoal uniform of the Warders. Garvin would decide when I could wear grey and he would make sure that I would not disgrace the reputation of the Warders before he would allow that. His decision was final.

  I looked forward to that day with a degree of trepidation. It would mean that he thought I was worthy of it, which was a huge compliment, but it would also mean that I was available for duty. Being a Warder meant being ready twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The Lords and Ladies could request our assistance or assign duties whenever they felt like it. That was the job.

  In practice, it wasn't an onerous schedule. Mostly the courts kept to themselves, dealing with their own internal issues. It was only when something affected all of them that the Warders were involved. Then the Warders would be called upon to carry out the will of the Seven Courts of the Feyre, which could be anything from delivering a message to carrying out an execution. The will of the courts was absolute, and the Warders were there to ensure it was enacted. I had heard that a job rarely took more than three of them.

  There were six of them and me, one from each of the seven courts. I had bargained for my life by threatening to expose the High Court's weakness. Their solution had been to make me a Warder, ensuring my loyalty and my silence, sworn under an oath bound by magic far more powerful than my own. But I wasn't an active Warder until Garvin said I was. It was his call.

  I clipped my phone to my belt. Amber called it my boy-toy and had told me to drop it down a well. She spurned all the trappings of technology and connected with no one outside the Warders as far as I knew. Even then it was a cold relationship. My phone was my connection with my human life and the means by which other people, human people, could contact me. In truth it had its limitations. If I used power with it near me then the battery would drain, sometimes beyond recharging. It had been through five batteries in its short life, even through I carried it only when I needed it. It wasn't allowed in the practice hall where it could distract me from my training but it meant I could check for messages when lessons were done for the day.

  It beeped twice when I turned it on. That would be Blackbird wanting to know what time I would be home. She had only partially settled into domestic life and felt vulnerable without the magic that her pregnancy denied her. I was assured it was quite natural and that it was to protect the baby from the raw power of fey magic. She accept
ed it, but she wasn't happy about it. It was the first time she had been without magic for hundreds of years and she felt the loss keenly.

  I grabbed my bag. The phone beeped again. What was the matter now? She knew I couldn't be contacted until the session ended, so what was the point of sending me multiple messages? Or was it simply that she wanted me to get some milk on the way home?

  I unclipped my phone from my belt and pressed the button to read the messages. The phone beeped again as I held it. What was the matter with it?

  The first message was from voice-mail saying that there was a voice message for me. The second message was from Blackbird. It said, "Call me, URGENTLY." The third message was from voicemail again. Another message beeped as I dialled Blackbird. What was going on?

  The number rang twice, then picked up.

  "Hello?"

  "It's me. You wanted me to call."

  "Thanks goodness, Niall, I've been trying to reach you all afternoon. Katherine rang. There's been an accident."

  "What kind of accident?"

  "It's Alex. She's in hospital."

  My stomach clenched at her words. "What happened? Is she OK?"

  "I don't know. There was some sort of incident at school. They called Katherine. She called me when she couldn't reach you. She said they were going to the hospital."

  "Is Alex all right?"

  "I don't know, Niall. She said to meet her there."

  "Give me the name of the hospital."

  Blackbird read out the address of a London hospital and gave me directions.

  "If Katherine calls, tell her I'm on my way."

  "I'll tell her."

  "Are you OK?" I asked her.

  "Yes." I could hear the lie clear down the phone line. Blackbird had once told me that magic was too close to truth for the Feyre to be able to lie convincingly.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I'm fine." She must have known I'd hear the lie. "Go see to your daughter. She needs you. Call me when you have news."

  "I will." I ended the call and headed for the basement. It was a two-hour drive to London, but I had no intention of driving. The house had another exit for those that could use it.

  The Ways were lines of elemental force that crisscrossed the landscape allowing the Feyre to travel quickly from place to place. While the High Court had no Way node of its own, it did have access to the Ways. I went down a set of stairs to a room below ground.

  Garvin had told me that the room I entered had been created by the Luchorpán, the Court of the Maker, to connect to the Ways without actually joining them permanently. The floor was marked with an intricate pattern, marking the points that could be accessed with radial lines terminating in silver stars, mirroring no constellation I knew.

  The Ways were held open by a smoky clear stone which, if you looked into it, was threaded through with tiny filaments like complex wiring. While it was placed in the centre of the pattern the Feyre could come and go, but once the stone was removed the connection collapsed and the house was isolated from the rest of the Ways.

  I only used a couple of the connections, the one that would take me to the house where Blackbird and I lived, and the one terminating in central London. There were eight or nine other connections I had never used. I once asked Tate where they went, and he said, "Everywhere."

  I found the star that signified the connection with London. Standing over it, I reached down with my power. Beneath the floor, the power of the Way swelled up to meet me. I took a step forward and it swept me into the stream, bearing me through a depth of blueblack night, swirled with streaks of unearthly light. On other occasions I would have exhilarated in the power of it, but now I only wanted it to carry me to my daughter. I shimmered into being in another basement, many miles away, stepping off the line and mounting the steps to the ground floor two at a time.

  My training made me leave the house cloaked in magic. This was one of the places that could connect directly with the High Court of the Feyre and Garvin would not thank me for revealing its secrets. I wrapped myself in power, cloaking myself with misdirection before unsealing the wards of protection holding the front door and exiting to the street. I walked away from the square where the house stood without looking back. Only when I was clear did I let the misdirection fall away and start hailing black cabs.

  The driver knew where the hospital was. I asked him to hurry, but with the evening traffic the progress was frustratingly slow. My impatience must have shown because he turned in his seat and leaned back to speak to me.

  "Do you want me to try another route? It'll be longer and cost a bit more, but it might be quicker."

  "Do it."

  He waited until the traffic moved forward, then turned sharply into the other lane. He reversed and then completed the U-turn to go back the way we had come. Shortly after, he turned into a narrow alley, taking us down the access roads between the backs of buildings, swerving around wheelie bins and badly parked cars. When we came to other main roads, he went straight across, halting only to wait for a gap so that he could drive over to the next back alley. We navigated up and down one way streets, taking odd turns and driving right around squares to get to rat runs that crossed the main routes. I held on to the grab handle to stop myself being thrown around in the back of the cab as we swerved around obstacles. Finally we juddered to a halt.

  "The hospital is down there, about fifty yards or so. I can't get any closer because of this bastard." He nodded at a huge truck parked in the middle of the road. "It'll be another twenty minutes if I take you round the oneway to the door."

  "That's great," I told him. "I'm really grateful." I paid him, adding a substantial tip.

  "Ta muchly," he grinned.

  I got out of the cab and the driver began backing down the street away from me. I could see the problem now. Someone had parked one of those enormous trucks that you usually only see in Europe in the middle of the road and left all the lights on. It looked new, the paintwork bright and clean. On the back there was a row of hazard warnings, the familiar sign for radiation, one for biological and another two that I didn't recognise.

  As I walked past it I felt something I almost didn't recognise. There was faint emanation from the truck, something that was only familiar because of what had happened the previous autumn. It wasn't strong, but it was the unmistakable taint of cold iron.

  Cold iron was anathema to fey magic and having it close set my teeth on edge, but this was only a trace, an echo of that sensation. There was no signwriting or logo down the side of the truck to identify it. If I had more time I would have investigated, but I needed to get to the hospital.

  As I passed, I noted the driver sitting inside the truck reading a newspaper. He looked settled, as if he'd been there some while. It struck me as odd because he was blocking the entire street and the police would normally insist that something like that was moved to clear the access, especially this close to a hospital.

  At the end of the street was the Accident and Emergency Unit, just as the cab driver had promised. I trotted past the entrance where ambulances were parked, their crews waiting on standby, to the public entrance and went straight to the information desk.

  "I'm looking for my daughter, Alexandra Dobson?" Alex had taken to using her mother's maiden name instead of my surname when Katherine and I divorced. It made sense, but somehow it still hurt.

  The man consulted his computer. "You'll need to go through that door and take a left. Head right down to the end and then take the lift up to the sixth floor. She's in the Tesla Wing. Ask at the nursing station when you get up there."

  I thanked him and followed his directions. I had to wait for the lift and nearly went for the stairs instead. It was six floors but I was a lot fitter than I used to be. The lift doors opened just as I had decided to take the stairs.

  On the sixth floor, I followed the signs to the Tesla Wing and went straight to the nursing station. As I started to speak, I spotted Barry, my ex-wife's new husband.

&n
bsp; "Never mind," I told the nurse. "I can see them."

  I went to walk past, but she stepped into my way.

  "I'm sorry, sir. You can't go down there."

  "I'm Niall Petersen, Alex Dobson's father."

  "I was told her father was already here," she said.

  "He's not her father." I told her. "He's her stepfather."

  "I see." Her attitude was brittle. "You may come with me then."

  She walked ahead of me down the corridor to where Barry was waiting. His expression was grim. My stomach clenched when he didn't smile.

  As we came near, Katherine, my ex-wife, appeared. The nurse was about to speak when Katherine ran forward and threw herself at me, hugging me close. Barry looked on, embarrassed.