The Road to Bedlam

by Mike Shevdon

  I recalled the gallowfyre, feeling it withdraw back into the core of magic within me. The glade returned to pinpricked starlit grey. The sound of Sam's struggles faded as the shoots knotted together.

  I looked down at him. "No. Once again, Sam Veldon, you do not understand. It doesn't want to kill you. It wants you alive so that you can be slowly absorbed into the ground and every ounce of you can be digested. You will be fertiliser, every last drop of you."

  I walked away, hearing the struggles behind me diminish as he was wound tighter into the grass. Ahead of me the path opened up so I could leave.

  "Wait. For God's sake, help me!" he croaked.

  "Help you, Sam Veldon? Why should I do that? Wasn't that your phrase – you wouldn't piss on me if I was on fire?"

  "It's getting in my skin! You can't leave me here. It's inhuman!"

  I paused. For the first time since the moment I first discovered my fey heritage, I looked at myself and what I'd become. "What makes you think," I asked him, "that I regard that as a problem?"

  There was a gargled, choking cough and then a spitting, strangled cry. "It's in my mouth. You have to help me. Please?" His voice tailed off.

  Standing there, with my back turned, I could not walk away and leave him, not and live with myself. No matter how I tried to deny my own humanity – however I might like to be fey-hearted, I was not. I could not abandon him.

  I walked slowly back across the glade. There was a mound of new grass, strangely like the fairy rings you sometimes see. As I got closer I found his form almost completely subsumed into the strands. They knotted and twisted, pinning him down like a grass-tied Gulliver tangled into a verdant Lilliput. His eyes darted sideways, wide with panic, but he was unable to move even his head.

  "Are you beginning to understand now, Sam Veldon? I asked for your help and you told me where to go. Would you now ask for mine?"

  His eyes widened, imploring me. A low mumbling sound came from beneath the grass.

  "Very well. Perhaps you will consider my requests more seriously in future."

  I stood back and addressed the glade. "Release him."

  The briar tangles around me rustled and quivered, but Sam was not released. I had thrown it a lifeline, and granted a reprieve. With him tangled there it could survive for a very long time indeed. It would not release him easily.

  "Release him and I will see to it that you are rewarded."

  The words died in the still air. I could still hear Sam fruitlessly trying to struggle against the fibrous bonds.

  I reached inside and released the power within me once again. Gallowfyre spilled out, dappling the glade in the moonlight. In the still air, the shifting, sliding glimmer was incongruous, as if made by the wrong kind of tree in the wrong place.

  "I said, release him."

  There was only further rustling. Sam remained trapped under the grass. The glade had refused the carrot. Now we would try the stick.

  Blackbird told me that gallowfyre is an expression of my inner self, the core of magic that makes me fey. To me it was more like a creature that lived inside me, a creature with appetites. I opened myself to the power and my call was answered. Into the dappled light, wriggling tendrils of darkness emerged, sparking with deep violet at their unseen edges, hinting at writhing tentacles unseen.

  They were shadows in shadow, barely visible. They threaded into the grass, seeking downwards into cracks in frost-hardened soil. Each was an exploring thread of power, a questing tongue. Whether as an extension of self or by some inner communication, I knew where they licked and what they tasted. I found Sam, cold and sweaty, streaked with green juices, red from weals and oozing from cuts. Beneath him was the ice-cold ground, and beneath that was a darker presence, hugging close to the warmth leaching into the soil. I drew back a tendril and then launched it, stinging the hidden presence, biting into it with cold, energy-leaching darkness of gallowfyre.

  It recoiled from the touch, squirming downwards into the frozen loam, vanishing into the soil. The grass around Sam relaxed and parted. An arm came free and he tugged at the strands until he could push himself up with an elbow. He pulled grass from his hair and from across his face, then yanked at it where it tangled his legs until he was in a frenzy of wrenching and tugging, throwing shreds of grass in all directions. He rolled over on one side and then crawled away from the spot. He did not collapse back on to it, though, but knelt up, brushing the remnant shreds from the tatters of his clothes.

  "Fucking grassy shit!" he spluttered.

  I recalled the gallowfyre, returning the glade to its normal pallid grey, while I watched him pull every last strand away until there was not a scrap of it left. Finally he stood.

  "I suppose I should thank you," he said.

  "Don't put yourself out."

  "Yeah. Well, thanks. I thought…" He shook his head, clearing it. "Fucking grass. I'm getting a lawn mower, a fucking big one. Better still, I'm getting me some gravel. Can't go wrong with gravel."

  "You'd better leave. I'll be in touch, Sam Veldon. I want to know where my daughter is."

  He stared at me for a moment, meeting my eyes. Then he looked away, and nodded.

  "Go. Leave this place."

  At my dismissal, he faded. I was alone in the glade.

  I looked around me. The still air held no hint of presence. The frozen ground was undisturbed but for the one patch of new growth, now torn and trampled.

  "It's time for me to leave." My words were thin in the cold air. "You cannot fight me. I am finished here. We're done."

  There was no echo. My voice sounded flat and empty.

  I walked around the glade. The thorns remained still where I passed and all was quiet. My feet on the crispcold grass made the only sound.

  "If you try and hold me here, it will be worse for you." The threat sounded hollow with no one to witness it.

  For the third time, I reached within me, releasing the gallowfyre and dappling the glade with shifting moonlight. The glade responded immediately. The thorns retracted, winding back down into the ground; the grass shrank until it was the barest hint of a sward. Within moments I was standing in an empty field, bordered by distant trees. Where there had been the barest minimum of presence before, now there was none.

  I looked around. Everywhere was the same. The ground rose slightly so that I was on the crown of a low rise. At the edges, scraggy firs edged the forest, backed by larger trees fading into the dark beneath the evergreens.

  "Hiding will not help you," I shouted. There was no reply.

  I set off towards the trees. I walked smartly, showing my determination, making it clear that I would brook no dissent. After a few minutes, I stopped. The trees were no nearer. Nor were the ones behind me any further away. I broke into a jog and then into a full run. I pushed myself, racing for the trees. Eventually I staggered to a hoarse halt.

  The trees remained at a distance.

  I put my hands on my knees, breathing hard. It was time to stop messing about. I straightened myself and opened the core of magic within me. I released the tendrils of gallowfyre, sending them questing through the bald grass, into the cracks, exploring the crevices, searching for the taste of life, the sense of a presence. They found only dead soil. There was nothing living in it. Even the grass was dead.

  "Show yourself! Come out and face me!" I shouted. My words evaporated in the thin cold air.

  I resolved to wait, then. I sat down on the cold grass, feeling the chill from the ground through the thin silk of my trousers. I missed the shirt I had given Helen to wrap the baby in. I shook my head. No, poor scrap, he could have it.

  In the stillness I found myself listening to the sound of my own breathing, the light draw and relax. I rubbed my hands together and heard the soft rasp of skin on skin. There was no other sound.

  I shook myself. There was a wriggling, scurrying sound. I looked down. Where my hand pressed to the ground, the grass had grown around it, sending little shoots up between my fingers. As I watched
, they withdrew, retreating back into the soil.

  I jolted myself awake. What was I doing? I had let myself be lulled by the peace. I was tired and hungry. I had let my head fall forward and fallen asleep where I sat. I shot to my feet, suddenly realising the danger I was in.

  If I fell asleep here, I would never wake up. The grass would pull me down and strangle me until I was immobile and unconscious, but not dead. No, it wouldn't want me dead. With Sam it could survive for a long time. If it kept him and hoarded him, he would feed the glade for as long as he lived, maybe for another forty years.

  But me? I was fey.

  If it could overcome me, it would have my full fey lifespan to feed on me. I could keep it alive for hundreds of years. I would be the meal that never ran out, the well that never ran dry.

  All it had to do was wait, and it was very good at waiting.

  EIGHTEEN

  I made myself walk up and down. If I fell asleep I was worse than dead, but that only made the exhaustion more acute. My throat felt dry and my bones ached from the cold. I needed to get back, but where was the exit?

  I thought about bringing others. Maybe if I summoned Debbie? She had a strange idea of what constituted fun – maybe she would like it here. Ultimately, though, that would be fruitless. Whoever I brought here, when they had gone, I would still be left. Unless I could think of a way to escape, I was going to be the meal on tap for as long as I lived.

  I tried delving into the ground, sending fingers of gallowfyre questing deep into the soil. There was nothing. It was as if the fey had developed the glade as armour. The glade was the fey, but only in the sense that my hair or my nails were me. I could cut them off and it would neither hurt nor harm me, but they were still me. The fey was like that. Somewhere under the layers of soil and the fringe of forest was a creature, but I was damned if I could find it.

  I tried tempting it, sitting on the grass looking as if I was asleep. It ignored me. I tried hurting it, pulling out little tufts of grass until I had a bare patch several feet across. As soon as my back was turned the grass grew again. I walked steadily towards the trees, testing whether there was a limit to how far I could go before I would make some progress. If there was a limit, I didn't reach it.

  The cold was creeping into my bones and the exhausting day and lack of food were starting to get to me. Eventually I would fall asleep, and then I would be in real trouble. I sat back on the grass, determined to think, and not under any circumstances to fall asleep.

  I tried to think of some way to summon help. I shouted for Garvin, and then Blackbird, to no effect. There was no surface in the glade that would reflect, nothing I could use as a mirror. My imagination conjured the fey that was the glade watching this from a distance, realising with smug satisfaction how increasingly desperate I was becoming.

  Would Garvin come and investigate if I didn't report that evening? If he found my sleeping self back in my room, was there anything he could do? In any case, might it be too late by then? The seductive thought of my sleeping body, resting in my bed, crept into my awareness and I began to feel warm. I shook myself awake again, momentarily toying with the idea of summoning Sam back. Maybe if I fed him to it, it would let me get some sleep?

  I stood up again and began pacing in a circle. There had to be a way. I was a Warder, for goodness sake! Garvin would be wetting himself at this performance. I had to think, but I was so tired.

  There was no Way-node here, so I couldn't use that. I wasn't even sure this was a place, never mind whether it had Way-points. Maybe if I could get to the trees I could find a way out? I had tried walking and running, but I had another possibility. Raffmir had shown me how to reach places I could see.

  I found a spot and focused on the distant tree-line. I opened myself to my surroundings and gathered energy to me. My skin fell into unreflective blackness and the cold deepened. I needed more to be able to jump across. The cold black core of magic within me dilated and the air around me chilled to bone-numbing intensity. The energy built slowly; it had started out cold. I held out my arms, extending my reach, increasing the area from which I drew, feeling downwards into the soil, upwards into the starlit sky. I drew it into me until the pale nimbus started flickering across my skin with tiny fingers of light. As the energy mounted I began to see.

  This was not the real world. I already knew that in my mind, but now I could see it. I had discovered earlier how the fabric of the real world lay draped across the frame of reality. It was possible to step beyond that curtain and pass through, but the curtain and the frame remained.

  What I found in the glade was a shimmering skin of a world with a liquid underbelly, formless and yet shaped. I peered beneath the skin of it and found within the liquid depths a beating heart.

  "Got you."

  Gallowfyre spilled from my hands, and in my heightened state I could see the tendrils of power reaching through the fabric of the skin and pricking that heart.

  I awoke in my bed and sat bolt upright. The scream of anguish echoed in my ears still, though the glade had gone. Little normal noises, the bark of a dog, cars moving outside, the distant call of a mournful gull, all told me I had come home.

  The mirror in my room was misted over. The whole room was deathly cold. Patterns of frost traced the inside of the window glass. It was midsummer and I had frost. Even as I watched, the frost blurred and clouded as the warmth transmitted through the glass turned frost to mist and then cleared.

  The day was brighter than the four o'clock my watch showed. I held the watch to my ears and it ticked lightly. I looked at it again, making sure I wasn't holding it upside down. Ten o'clock would make more sense. Four o'clock was what it showed. I turned back the duvet, went to the window and peered through the misty glass. The sun was over the hill at the back of the town. It was four in the afternoon. not four in the morning. I had more than slept the clock around and I still felt exhausted.

  I opened the window to let in some of the warm air from outside to heat the room, then went into the bathroom and spent a good ten minutes under the shower with the temperature wound round as hot as I could bear it. I never wanted to be cold again. I emerged, pink and steaming, and put on clothes from the previous day.

  Once dressed I looked at myself in the mirror. There were dark rings under my eyes and my cheeks looked sunken. No wonder: I was starving. My stomach grumbled at the first thought of food. Before I could feed myself, though, I needed to follow up on the night's work.

  Pressing my hand to the mirror, I told it what I wanted.

  "Sam Veldon – his mobile phone."

  I had discovered the ability to tap into the phone network from something Raffmir and Solandre had done when I had first encountered them. I had then discovered it was also possible to contact mobile phones, even if they were turned off. How the connection worked I had no idea, but it would enable me to cash in a favour I was owed.

  Sam's phone was difficult to reach. I lowered the temperature of the room again as I drew in more power for the connection. "Sam Veldon, speak to me."

  The line squeaked and chirped, making stuttering chattering noises. Then a broken ring, distorted by poor line quality. It rang eight or nine times before it answered.

  "Is someone there?"

  It was a strange question from someone who had just answered a phone.

  "Sam, you know who this is, right?"

  "I can't hear you." The lie in Sam's voice was blatant.

  "I know perfectly well you can hear me, Sam Veldon. Now listen…"

  "Stupid thing shouldn't work at all." He was addressing someone else. "This whole building is shielded. Here, let me take it outside. When will they get these things right?"

  I could hear him moving around. Then his voice came back on. "Give me your number. I'll ring you in five."

  "I don't have a number, Sam. I'll call you in three." I released the mirror.

  Why were the phones I wanted to call always so difficult?

  Having said I would call
him in three, I waited four minutes before trying again. This time the call went straight through without problem. It rang once.

  "How the hell did you get this number?"

  "Good afternoon, Sam. I'm well, thanks. How are you?"

  "Scratched to high heaven and sore to boot. What the fuck happened last night?"

  "Not quite what you were expecting, was it, Sam?"

  "Let's get back to where you got this number from. It's supposed to be unlisted."

  "You only think I'm phoning you. This isn't real. The scratches on your arms and the weals around your throat aren't real either. You owe me a favour, Sam Veldon, and I intend to collect."

  "This isn't happening."

  "I told you that. Do you have the information on my daughter?"