The Queen of Sinister

by Mark Chadbourn

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than his hand fell back and his eyelids fluttered shut. The deterioration of his corporeal form suddenly became intense; a cloud of fluttering golden moths soared skyward, blinding all those who watched, and when they finally cleared there was nothing left.

  'That's why there's no one here,' Crowther said with horror as he stared at the space where the god had lain. 'They've all been murdered. All of them ... the entire court.'

  'Over here!' Jack's voice carried from the edge of the penumbra.

  The others ventured over, distracted and disturbed by what they'd seen. A powerful feeling of dread crept up on them. They found Jack looking up at a standard that had been rammed into the floor with such unnatural force that cracks radiated out across the marble from the base of the metal spur. At the top hung a flag made of some kind of shimmering but ultralight metal featuring a stylised drawing of a seashell.

  In the thin torchlight, Jack's face appeared to have drained of all blood. 'It's the standard of the Court of the Yearning Heart,' he said weakly.

  Matt grabbed him by the shoulders. 'What do you know?'

  Jack wiped his hand across a suddenly snotty nose. 'They're one of the worst of the courts. They don't care about humans ... they don't care about anything.' He looked around, eyes blinking stupidly. 'They killed them all. Their own people!'

  'We need to get out of here,' Crowther said. 'That poor soul gave us a warning—'

  A deep, sonorous tolling echoed somewhere in the depths of the court, moving slowly through the thick stone walls, spreading its warning until every room and corridor was filled with the dim pounding.

  'They know we're here,' Mahalia said, wide-eyed. 'How do they know?'

  Matt cursed. 'Someone obviously just killed that Golden One ... a mopping-up exercise. They were probably just leaving when we arrived.' He looked around with uncertainty. 'I can't tell if the alarm is coming from ahead of us or behind.'

  Their moment of paralysis was broken when they heard what appeared to be the skittering of insects. It took a second for them to grasp that it was the sound of many feet approaching from a great distance.

  'An army!' Crowther said with horror. 'Bloody hell fire, there's an army of them!'

  Matt propelled the other three in the direction of a large arched opening leading to an annexe dominated by a rectangular shallow pool of water. The torch sent rippling patterns of light and shade moving across the wall as they passed. Beyond lay a processional corridor lined with lush heavily patterned drapes that led on to what may have been a ballroom or a concert hall, the disturbing carvings giving way to gleaming white columns and swirling confections moving along pink walls; a raised dais lay at one end.

  The pattering footsteps were louder now, coming from all sides. 'It sounds like children,' Mahalia gasped. She had drawn the Fomorii sword, ready to lash out as she ran.They emerged through an open gilded gate into an enormous indoor garden of trees and well-clipped hedges, wrought iron fences and pergolas covered with flowering creepers, beds of alien blooms of red and blue and purple that released an intoxicating perfume, sheltering boulders and gravelled areas filled with tall grasses. It was designed in such a way that the paths led through it like a maze, revealing each new section only at the last moment. The most startling thing lay at the focal point: a well of sunlight streaming down through a hole in the roof, dazzling in contrast to the gloom that lay all around. A system of mirrors were fixed here and there, so that at certain times they could be turned to give light to the whole garden.

  It was only when they'd ventured deep into the complex maze that they realised their mistake. The design made it impossible for them to see the approach of attackers from any direction until they would be upon the companions.

  'Let's make it to the sun. It'll be lighter there and we can make a stand,' Matt said fatalistically.

  It wasn't long before they realised they were surrounded. Running feet pattered by on every side in the dark, crunching on gravel, rustling past bushes or disturbing wind chimes. The sound became intense, like rain on the window in a heavy winter storm. They could just make out bodies, flashing past gaps in the vegetation and garden architecture, not human, small, smaller even than the people of the Court of Soul's Ease.

  Words from a poem kept repeating in Crowther's head: For fear of little men ... for fear of little men. And he did feel fear, and revulsion, and he could see it in the faces of the others. There was something in the size, and the way they scurried rapidly, that suggested rats, bringing up feelings buried since the earliest development of the human mind.

  Their pursuers closed in rapidly, waiting for the moment when the four were completely surrounded. And that point came when the companions finally reached the column of sunlight, which centred on a raised platform of white marble. They thrust themselves into it, relishing the warmth on their faces, but all detail beyond the pillar of illumination disappeared into the dark and, reluctandy, they had to step back out of the column of light to see what awaited them.

  From their vantage point, they had a view across a larger part of the garden. Small, scurrying figures were everywhere, stretching back into the deep dark, a writhing, squirming sea of rodent life. The nearest ones revealed the previously hidden forms: pale skin, long limbs, squat bodies, nasty eyes and brutish brows.

  Crowther couldn't believe that these people had once appeared as the stately, graceful Golden Ones. They had regressed to some point far, far back on their path of evolution, a state that spoke of viciousness and bestial urges, scratching out an existence in the dark places beneath the earth, only emerging at night with murder on their breath and hatred in their hearts.

  And as he looked, with the fear swelling like an ocean inside him, he thought he understood why. They appeared to his perception as they truly were, no longer the aloof godlike Golden Ones, but the scrabbling creatures of humanity's darkest nightmares, broken by defeat and bitterness, desperate to prevent men from reaching the next stage of spiritual evolution, filled with all the basest urges. The more they gave in to hatred and murder, the more devolved they became.

  They were all carrying tiny knives that glinted in the light. Crowther guessed they could gut and dress a body in minutes, seconds if they fell on a victim in numbers. This was it, then. Mahalia, Matt and Jack braced themselves for any attack, weapons at the ready. Half-heartedly, Crowther raised his staff.

  The seething throng parted as a figure moved forward from the darkness at the back. As he neared, they could see that he stood more erect than the others, though he was just as small. He had a long grey beard, but his eyes had the same black, hateful essence as his fellows'. Once he reached the front of the throng, he eyed them with cold malice. 'Fragile Creatures,' he said contemptuously. 'What do you here in the Far Lands?'

  Matt stepped forward. 'We're not concerned with whatever war you've got going on amongst your people. We're not going to interfere. We just want to get on our way, and to deal with our own business.'

  'Interfere?' The little man laughed hollowly. 'My name is Melliflor, first lieutenant to the Queen of the Court of the Yearning Heart,' he added, regarding them slyly. 'And we do not like Fragile Creatures here in the Far Lands. You have your own home, Son of Adam, and now you have ventured far beyond the fields you know.'

  The crowd of little men behind him was like a tidal wave, waiting to break upon the four standing near the light. They surged and pressed, but Melliflor held them back by the force of his charisma while his cunning weighed the situation. He removed his own little knife from his belt and proceeded to clean his long, dirty fingernails in an ostentatiously threatening manner.

  One of his army couldn't hold back any longer and darted forward, grasping towards Mahalia's foot. She lashed out savagely with the Fomorii sword and took his arm off at the elbow. He howled in pain, rolling backwards across the floor. A hiss whistled through the assembled army and they rose up as one, ready to strike. Matt, Mahalia and Jack steeled themse
lves.

  'No more sunlight for you,' Melliflor said with false sadness. He raised one arm; the little men prepared to move.

  The constant itching that assailed Crowther's back became at that moment a full-scale rush of molten iron in his veins. Even if he had fought he wouldn't have been able to prevent his hands from darting to the secret pocket and removing the mask. If he was about to die, he wanted to do it in the luxurious, stimulating, cocooning world of the mask, the only place he had ever known true pleasure and true acceptance.

  But the moment he brought out the mask, the sunlight gleaming off its silvered surface, the little men drew back as one, as if they were about to be burned, their nasty little eyes grown wide with fear. Matt saw their response and clutched at Crowther's arm. 'Don't put it on - just hold it out,' he hissed.

  With trembling hand, Crowther just about resisted, though it edged slowly towards his face.

  Melliflor recovered first, his eyes filled with a hungry gleam that Crowther knew only too well. 'Give me the mask. It is too dangerous for Fragile Creatures. Give it to me and you shall be allowed to leave here.'

  'How can we trust you?' Matt shouted.

  'You have my word - on the weft and weave.'

  'A promise?'

  'A promise. And we do not give our word lightly, Fragile Creature.' Melliflor appeared hypnotised by the light dancing off the mask, desperately yearning and fearful at the same time.

  'Give it to him,' Matt whispered to Crowther. 'We don't have any choice. Even if we can't trust him, it might cause enough of a diversion for us to get out of here if you throw it right into the heart of them.'

  'No.' The word was quiedy spoken and steely hard.

  'Don't be stupid!' Matt dug his fingers into Crowther's arm. 'What's wrong with you?'

  'Do you have any idea what they could do with this mask?'

  Matt searched Crowther's face. 'That's not the real reason. What's going on?' Matt didn't wait for an answer, instead lunging for the mask. Crowther elbowed him sharply in the face and stepped away so he could turn defiantly and clamp the mask on to himself.

  An exclamation of terror rushed through the army of little men like a wind on a stormy night. At the back there was frantic movement as some of them turned and fled; others scurried for cover, while the ones near the front were paralysed with fear.

  Melliflor looked ghastly pale in the light coming off the mask. 'Good Son, forgive us,' he said in hushed, desperate tones.

  The second the mask had attached itself to Crowther's face, Matt, Mahalia and Jack noticed a change in the atmosphere. A terrible weight bore down on all of them; sound became muffled and light, what little there was, became distorted.

  Behind the mask, Crowther cried out. His hands rushed towards his face to tear the mask off, but then they suddenly fell limply to his sides, and he turned to face the little men. Melliflor was already backing away into the crowd. The little men scrambled and attacked each other in their desperation to escape, but their numbers were too great.

  The mask fixed its attention on Melliflor with those cold, unseeing eyes. He dropped to his knees beneath the weight of the stare and clutched at his face, his nails biting deeply into his sallow skin. There was a slight nod from Crowther, and in the blink of an eye, Melliflor turned inside out. His organs and musculature appeared outside his body in a sticky mess. His eyes, still staring, registered an instant of surprised horror, and then his body disappeared in a frantic cloud of moths. This time, however, they were of the deepest black.

  The atmosphere of tension broke as the frantic little men scrambled hither and thither, hunting for ways back into the dark places where they could hide. A route opened up towards the other side of the garden.'You can take the mask off now!' Matt yelled, but Crowther was lost to the surging power. The air around him shimmered and became like glass, ballooning out across the garden. Escaping figures were thrown into the air wherever it passed, limbs falling away as if they had been severed by surgical knives, organs pulled free and dismantled with a lazy curiosity by invisible hands. Soon the air was thick with black moths.

  'He's lost it!' Mahalia said.

  'Let's get him out of here!' Matt ordered. He grabbed one arm and Jack took the other, both of them fearful that the powers the mask was exhibiting would soon be turned on them. As they hurried out of the garden, the devastating attack by the mask continued in full force, lashing backwards at the fleeing little men, plucking up the stragglers, disappearing into passages, drains and culverts where some hid.

  But once the three of them led Crowther into the rooms beyond, the power became less aggressive, though still potent. Psychedelic colours painted the walls or surged in fountains in the air. Briefly, Mahalia's hand became like crystal. The motion-music burst from the walls with the force of a hundred orchestras, beautiful melodies and wild, percussive rhythms fighting for space, so loud they could barely hear themselves think, the compositions brilliance and madness in equal measure.

  And wherever they went, the air appeared to peel back to give views over alien landscapes, or into deepest space where cold stars glimmered, into other worlds, other dimensions. People came and went in a flash, faces that appeared vaguely familiar, some old friends, others strangers, but behind it all was an unnerving sense of meaning, as if they were seeing the structures of reality laid bare. Jack saw a Fabulous Beast soaring high over London, its jewelled scales glinting in the burst of fire that erupted from its mouth on to some dark tower. Mahalia glimpsed a desperate man who'd done desperate things shoot himself in the head, dead, dead as a doornail, and then later running with a sword through what appeared to be a cathedral, though the order of the visions made little sense to her. And Matt, he saw generals and spies and dead-eyed men sitting around a table plotting some big lie to deceive a population, only for that lie to become reality. And they all saw someone reading a book, painting mind-pictures from the words, creating more realities with every thought, making them hard and fast and real. Existence was fluid, everything was changing.

  They rushed onwards, dragging Crowther between them, while the chaos and the madness of the warp surged all around, so that after a while their minds began to rebel, not knowing where they were or what they were doing.

  The court was a vast maze, and in the heavy darkness it was impossible to tell if they were doubling back on themselves. They began to feel as if they would be in there for ever, trapped in an awful purgatory.

  But then they discovered that Crowther was beginning to lead them, at first subtly suggesting changes in direction with a shift of his body weight, then increasingly pulling them along with him. They hurried down extravagantly decorated corridors, through vast, ringing halls, until they came to an arch big enough for three buses to pass through side by side. Over the top was a carving of a coiled, bewinged Fabulous Beast with sapphires for eyes, and beyond lay steep steps winding down into darkness.

  'This looks like the way out,' Jack gasped breathlessly. He let go of Crowther's arm; the professor stood quietly, the mask now silent. 'Why's he suddenly calmed down?'

  'Don't hang around talking,' Mahalia pressed. 'I just want to get out of this creepy place.' She headed through the arch without giving the others a chance to debate.

  The stairs were broader and more grand than the secret way out of the Court of Soul's Ease. Celtic spiral patterns in mosaic lined the walls, suggesting that the route was perhaps ceremonial. After fifteen minutes, they opened into an enormous cave with a small beach and the river lapping against it. Through the cave mouth they could see the late-afternoon sun on the slow-moving water and, beyond, the thick forest pressing heavily against the far bank.

  'Looks like we bypassed the gorge and the rapids,' Matt said, with definite relief. 'I don't want to tempt fate, but we may be able to pick up Triathus.'

  'Blind luck,' Mahalia said. 'It's about time something worked out in our favour.'

  They helped Crowther as they picked their way over the slick rocks around the cave mo
uth, and after splashing through the shallows with the refreshing sun on their faces, they eventually pulled up on to the bank and lay amongst the trees at the river's edge.

  'I thought we were dead in there,' Mahalia said, one arm across her eyes, the rise and fall of her chest gradually calming.

  Jack sat next to her, unable to resist gently stroking her hair. 'Professor Crowther saved us. If he didn't have the mask...'

  'I don't reckon it's as simple as that,' Matt interjected.

  Mahalia looked up at the dark tone in Matt's voice. He was watching the professor uneasily, who sat against the base of a tree, unmoving, the mask still clamped to his face.

  'Why doesn't he take it off?' Mahalia asked.

  Matt grimaced. 'I don't think he can.'

  Caitlin marched through the night, the world red and black. Birmingham was far behind her. Lightning surged through her arteries, blazed across her mind; she was supercharged, glorious, almost floating above the land as she walked.

  At times her own mind was present, though hyper- aware, with none of the doubts that had torn her apart before. The clarity and confidence only added to her sense of ultimate wellbeing. At other times, the Morrigan's dark presence wove its way through her consciousness, like the thrashing of a murder of crows, and then there was only chaos and fragmented thoughts, like glimpses of a terrible battle through the drifting smoke of destruction.

  Caitlin had covered miles in her energised state; she had no idea where she was going, but the Morrigan certainly did. The Midlands landscape had rolled under her feet. She neither tired nor paused for rest over a day and a night, gaining sustenance only from the fruit and wild vegetables she found on her route. Now she was passing through the lush Leicestershire countryside, a place of overgrown fields and a rampant, once well-tended forest that had spread almost magically across the area.