The Queen of Sinister

by Mark Chadbourn

  Caitlin brought them to a halt on the edge of a copse of ash, with the wood still some three miles away. 'Lugh told me where the House of Pain lay.' She waved towards the north. 'But I want to be sure there are no major obstacles in the way.'

  'What are you going to do? Call the RAC?' Crowther sneered. He took off his hat and mopped the sweat from his brow.

  'No,' Caitlin replied, 'you're going to find out for us - and any other information that might be of use.'

  'Really. And how do you propose I do that?' Crowther slumped against the base of a tree.

  The others waited for Caitlin to reply, but instead her eyes rolled back eerily until only the whites were visible. 'Don't try to trick us.' It was Brigid's voice, punctuated by a cackling laugh.

  'I wish she wouldn't do that,' Mahalia hissed.

  'It's in your pocketssss ...' Brigid said, teasing him.

  Crowther blanched. 'What are you talking about?'

  'In your pocketssss.' Another cackle. 'The secret one, in the lining of your coat.'

  Crowther shook his head uncomfortably.

  'The mask. We need the mask,' Caitlin/Brigid hissed.

  'Go away.' Crowther looked spooked now.

  Matt pulled the professor to his feet. 'What are you hiding?'

  'Get away from me!' Crowther brandished his staff, his fear plain to see.

  'We needssss it,' Caitlin/Brigid keened.

  Crowther held his threatening pose for a moment and then sagged. From the voluminous depths of his overcoat, he pulled an object that glinted like sunlight. It was indeed a mask, but fashioned of the purest silver. The male face shaped on the front was perfect - the wide, empty eyes just the right distance apart, the nose straight and small, the lips full, the cheekbones beautiful - so much so that they all found it attractive. Yet its effect was even greater than that: the simple appearance was so powerful that it moved them to tears, sucking swelling emotions from places that had never been touched before.

  'What is that?' Mahalia whispered in awe.

  Jack made a strange sound in the depth of his throat. 'The Immaterius. The Mask of Maponus.'

  'You know it?' Crowther said, surprised.

  'I've heard whispers... in the Court of the Final Word.' Jack couldn't take his eyes off it. 'They say you can look into the very depths of Existence with it, understand the reasons behind everything, but it was tied into the mind of one of the gods ... And when he went mad, something happened to the mask, too.'

  'If you look through it in the right way you can see God,' Crowther said dully. 'And if you look in the wrong way you see hell - you go mad, like Maponus.'

  'That was how you found me,' Caitlin said. 'You looked through that and saw me, and you came.'

  Crowther nodded. His hands were shaking as he held the mask. 'You don't understand ...' He attempted to put the mask away, but appeared unable. 'Every time I use it, it takes a part of me, a little sliver of my soul. It's killing me a bit at a time. That's the price I pay for getting its knowledge.'

  'Do you think I care?' Caitlin said coldly. 'This is about more than you, or me, or any of us. It's about saving the human race - all those poor people dying for something that has nothing to do with them - and if sacrifices are needed, that's what we have to do.'

  'I didn't sign up for that,' Crowther replied dully.

  'No, you thought you were getting an easy ride to an easy life. Tough. You made the wrong choice. You were better off where you were.'

  Crowther stared at her unwaveringly for a moment, seeing her with new eyes. 'I don't know whether you're quite hateful, or simply deluded,' he said eventually. 'Well, you can't make me.'

  Caitlin's icy smile made him uneasy. 'Don't tempt me.'

  The sun was setting in a flame of deepest red when Crowther finally felt ready to use the mask. Odd, discomfiting shadows crept from the base of the sprawling forest and strange hungry bird-sounds echoed from its depths. The incarnadine glow gave a hellish tint to the mask's sheen as Crowther searched for a location for his ritual. He eventually settled on a spot near a sprawling rowan bush, its flowers emanating a sickly-sweet perfume.

  While Caitlin and Matt helped Crowther to settle, the younger ones sat several yards away, watching the scene. 'You know all about this,' Mahalia said to Jack. 'Who's Maponus?'

  'He's one of the Golden Ones,' Jack replied. 'They called him The Good Son and he had a special place amongst the gods. Really powerful, you know, but they all loved him, too. And then he became trapped on your ... our ... world and that drove him mad. Now the Golden Ones keep him locked up somewhere in the Court of the Final Word, trying to cure him. Even they don't dare let him loose. He could destroy everything - and probably would, given half the chance.'

  'And this mask is really powerful?' Her eyes glimmered.

  "Very powerful.' He gave her a sideways glance. 'Too powerful for you or I. Best not to get involved in things like that.'

  As Crowther sat cross-legged, Matt wandered off to the place fifty feet away from where he and Caitlin had decided to monitor the proceedings. Caitlin was about to follow him when Crowther spoke.

  'Making sure you don't get too close, I see,' Crowther said savagely. 'The risks appear to be all on my shoulders.'

  'You chose it,' Caitlin said. 'Do you know what you're doing?'

  'No. I know what I'm trying to do, but these things never go smoothly. Especially with this.' He looked at the mask with naked hatred.

  'Brigid tells me you can't get rid of it,' Caitlin said.

  'It's like a damn drug,' Crowther replied. 'I wish I'd never picked it up.'

  'How did you come across it?'

  He shifted uncomfortably. 'I stole it... from the college in Glastonbury. That'll teach me, won't it? It came from some treasure trove of magical items the miserable old fool in charge of the college had been guarding for God knows how long. I don't think they really knew the value of it.'

  'But you did.'

  'I had an inkling. These artefacts of power often insinuate their way into plain sight, waiting for the right person to come along.' He laughed bitterly. 'Or the wrong person.'

  'You're talking as if they're alive,' Caitlin said.

  'You don't know how right you are.' Crowther weighed the mask in his hands before saying, 'I should have known there was no running away. After everything I've done in my life, I wouldn't be allowed to get off so easily. You'd better go back to your friend. And whatever happens, don't come near me until I've removed the mask.'

  Caitlin returned to the sheltered spot with Matt, all thoughts of Crowther now obliterated by the screaming monkey noises emanating from the back of her head; her other selves were scared - apart from the one who resided at the very back, in the shadows. Emboldened, she was continuing her slow creep into the light.

  They watched and waited for almost half an hour until the sun was a blood-red incision on the horizon and the cacophony of bird-sounds in the forest had died away, leaving an eerie silence. Only then did Crowther lift the silver mask to his face.

  He paused when it was just an inch away, as if overcome with second thoughts, and then the strangest struggle began; from the others' viewpoint the mask appeared to be fighting Crowther, or perhaps it was his subconscious fighting himself. But then, when the silver was just half an inch from his skin, bolts unfurled from the side of the mask where previously they had been invisible, rose out and rammed themselves into the sides of Crowther's head.

  He screamed. There was a whirring noise as the bolts screwed themselves into bone and then the mask levered itself into position and clamped on tight. Crowther went rigid.

  'Do you feel that?' Matt whispered.

  Caitlin did; the air was heavy and infused with a steely sheen like the atmospherics before an electrical storm. Everything was so still and quiet it was as though all sound had been sucked out of the vicinity.

  'Something bad's going to happen,' Caitlin/Amy whimpered.

  Entranced by Crowther's display, Mahalia wasn't awar
e that Carlton had wandered away until she saw him just feet from the professor. She attempted to run to him, but Jack grabbed her wrist and dragged her back.

  'Don't,' he hissed. 'It's too dangerous.'

  'I don't care!' She wrenched her hand free. 'Carlton!'

  But by then it was too late. Carlton was by Crowther's side, reaching out, his fingers skimming the surface of the mask.

  There was a sound like the swash and backwash of water or the beat of a heart in an echo chamber, rising slowly from somewhere near the horizon, but rushing closer, until it was all around them. Sh-ssh, sh-ssh, sh-ssh.

  Light leaked from the ground, as if the illusion of reality was breaking apart to reveal what lay behind it. A few seconds later there was no forest or countryside, no sky, just a strange wan light with no up or down.

  The six of them were suspended in nothing, Crowther still sitting cross-legged. Vertigo brought them to the point of sickness, until they suddenly adjusted as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  'What the hell's going on?' Matt said. 'This wasn't supposed to involve us.'

  And then Carlton spoke, except his lips didn't move, his face bright with a broad smile. 'There's time enough for rest later. We have a job to do now.'

  He pointed, and as they turned to see what he was indicating, the whole of Otherworld was suddenly spread out before them.

  'Oh, God,' Mahalia gulped. 'We're standing in the air!'

  'We think we're standing in the air,' Carlton said. 'We think a lot of things that aren't true. But this is the important thing now. Look.'

  Ahead of them, the primal forest swarmed with darkness, but slicing through it was a ribbon of silver: the river. It meandered past a swamp, where a brilliant blue something lay partially hidden. The river continued through fields of green and gold and more clustering forest until it swung around on the edge of a small desert. On the rolling sands, they could make out strange piles of rocks - cairns - as if they were next to it. And beyond the desolate plain, the land itself appeared to fall away.

  There was mist, and colours fragmenting, before the inky-blue void of space scattered with a million stars. And right on the edge between what was solid and what was for ever stood an indistinct black shape: the House of Pain.

  'You will find the cure for the plague in the heart of that place,' Carlton said. 'It's a dangerous journey. It takes us from the hard here-and-now through the changing climes to a place where everything we know starts to fall apart. There, on the edge, we will face true darkness; and we will look deep into ourselves. We will face death.' He took Caitlin's arm. 'If you want to find your son, that's where he'll be. The dead pass through that place, to the Grim Lands or other places.'

  'My husband?'

  'Already gone. I'm sorry.'

  Caitlin's heart fell, but it rose again quickly when she thought of Liam and the chance that she might be able to bring him back.

  'How can you speak?' Mahalia asked Carlton with tears in her eyes, yet as she said it, she was troubled that this wasn't how Carlton should sound. His words and tone made him appear much older, wiser; not a boy at all.

  'Look over there.' The grim note in Matt's voice made them turn.

  The purple haze brought an instant frisson of anxiety to them all. Bigger than they would have anticipated, it billowed close to the Court of Soul's Ease, but was unmistakably moving in their direction. Through gaps in the mist they could just make out the Lament-Brood, driving forward on their reptilian mounts, their numbers swelled.

  'If we hesitate for a minute, they'll catch us,' Matt said.

  'We're not going to waste any time.' Caitlin was defiant.

  'Be brave,' Carlton said genially. 'Be true. The best of us can defeat the worst.'

  'Wait,' Caitlin said, suddenly tense. 'Something's happening...'

  They returned their attention to the House of Pain, and now they could sense in it a presence, skittering like an insect running from the light. It wasn't afraid; rather, it had seen them and was now sizing them up, moving this way, then that, looking at them from all angles.

  In a twinkling the benign atmosphere changed. A ripple moved out through the scenery, gentle at first, but building until it was a tidal wave of destruction, distorting everything they could see. Finally it hit them and they were thrown off their feet, spinning through a world of broken shards and flickering colours, spinning round and round uncontrollably until...

  The storm crashed overhead as Caitlin swam through liquid clay. She was in a deep hole and as she rolled on to her back she saw an oblong of night sky, immeasurably distant and desolate. She knew where she was before the hands erupted from the earth on either side of her and folded across her waist in a mockery of a love-hug.

  'You made me die,' the husky voice whispered through a mouthful of clay into her ear. 'If you'd been there to care for me, and love me, I wouldn't have suffered. The disease wouldn't have eaten its way through me and my final hours wouldn't have been filled with pain ... and your son wouldn't have died. But you didn't love us. You only loved yourself. Your fault ... all your fault...'

  And the hands slowly began to pull Caitlin down into the slurping clay. She didn't resist, because the voice was right.

  In the confines of a sweltering attic, with only a thin shaft of sunlight for illumination, Mahalia huddled on an old sack, knees tucked into her chest, and stared into the blue face of a dead baby. Its voice sounded like pebbles on stone. 'No one will ever love you. This is a world where mothers give up their children to save their own lives, where everybody looks after themselves. Don't expect comfort, or security, or sacrifice, or tenderness. The only rule is to survive at any cost. You're on your own. You'll always be on your own.'

  And though Mahalia cried and plugged her fingers in her ears, the rattling, sickening baby voice never stopped.

  Matt stood alone. A cold wind blew across a landscape devoid of all humanity.

  Every fibre of Jack's being was alive with pain as the inhuman surgeons of the Court of the Final Word cut and peeled and flayed and took him apart down to the smallest atom, and then built him back up again, in their image. Seeing how he worked. Seeing how he could work. And he had no memories of his mother to protect him, apart from what he had glimpsed from the watchtower, and he had no connection with anything soft and human at all. He was completely and devastatingly alone.

  And he knew what plans they had for him, coded into the very structure of his genes.

  In the oppressive darkness behind the mask, Crowther saw all that was happening to his fellow travellers, felt what they were feeling, succumbed to the same terrors and suffered his own magnified four-fold: the self-loathing, the loss of his family, the loneliness. The emotions were so acute, so sickening, it felt as if his mind was being ripped away.

  And behind all of them was the chaotic buzzing of the mad god Maponus. His powerful consciousness extended out from the Court of the Final Word, through the medium of the mask, to taint them all, to show them the despair and the dread and the hideous confusion of his own fractured existence.

  There was no escape for any of them. Insanity and suffering prevailed.

  And then the strangest thing happened, just as the clay began to flow into Caitlin's mouth, as Mahalia brought blood to her ears in an attempt to shut out the sound. Carlton was there, with all of them, at the same time, and in the same way that Maponus had been. He said, simply, 'This is what it means to be human.'

  His words unfolded in their minds to reveal a hidden message of universal support: they weren't alone. And as soon as they accepted that unmistakable concept, the suffering and madness fell away. Caitlin gulped and choked and found herself sucking in fresh night air, grass beneath her back. The others were scattered around, dazed and shaking, propelled back into reality but with their suffering still close.

  The Mask of Maponus lay in Crowther's hands. He stared at it blankly, chest juddering with a silent sob, thin trickles of blood running from the holes in the sides of
his head; he looked like an old, old man. Caitlin felt a wave of guilt at what she had put him through, but she could say nothing to comfort him, for she knew she might have to ask the same of him again.

  Carlton stood nearby, smiling benignly, and Caitlin shakily went over to give him a hug. 'Thank you,' she whispered. She knelt down so she was on a level with him. 'You are the special one.'

  Carlton continued to smile, gave nothing away.

  Mahalia roughly shoved Caitlin aside. 'Can't speak again, mate?' Carlton shook his head. She put a protective arm around Carlton's shoulder and led him away.

  'He's a weird kid,' Matt said. 'The things he was saying, the way he was acting ... he seemed—'

  'More than us?' Caitlin finished. 'I think Carlton's going to be more help getting us through this than we thought.' She grew sad. 'He's a lovely boy.'

  'He reminds you of your son.'

  Caitlin was surprised by Matt's empathy, and the fact that he had noticed something she had only been vaguely aware of herself made her warm to him even more. 'He's nothing like Liam in so many ways, but there's a quality ... a calmness ... that is so Liam. We have to look after him, Matt. Life's so cruel these days...'

  'I'll keep an eye on him, don't worry. Besides, it looks as though he's got his own personal minder.' He nodded towards Mahalia, who sat with her arm around Carlton, talking gently about what they had just experienced.

  'Do you trust her?' Caitlin asked.

  'God, no,' he replied, without a second thought.

  As Mary continued her journey eastwards across the South Downs, she felt herself growing fitter. Her craving for alcohol was driven out of her by the simple fact that there was none to be had, although it never completely disappeared. She travelled by day, keeping to the high ground, as far removed as she could manage from human habitation. First and foremost, she didn't want to risk coming in contact with any centres of the plague, but she was also aware that a woman travelling alone was a tempting target for some of the forces of anarchy that had risen up since the collapse of the country's governance.