Poison

by Chris Wooding

  The key rattled again as Andersen batted it.

  “There’s no way he’s going to be able to turn it,” Poison said. “We have to knock it through.”

  Andersen mewed in agreement.

  It took them only a few moments to find something long and thin enough to jab into the lock – a candle-spike from a candelabra – and with a little effort they worked the key out. It fell with a clatter on the other side. Moments later, they heard it being scraped along the floor, and it was slid under the door to them. Peppercorn clapped in delight as Poison picked it up, unlocked the door, and opened it. Andersen was grooming himself smugly on the other side. Peppercorn scooped him up and ruffled his fur, tickling him and cooing over him until Poison felt almost embarrassed for her.

  “That cat’s not natural,” Bram murmured once again.

  “You can’t argue with the results, though,” Poison replied.

  They looked down the empty corridor, made of the same beautiful jade stone as most of the Phaerie Lord’s palace.

  “Now where?” Bram said.

  Poison looked at the cat. “I don’t suppose you might be able to find Aelthar for us?” she ventured. She had learned not to discount any possibility where their odd companion was concerned.

  Andersen sprang down from Peppercorn’s arms, shook himself, and mewed at them.

  “Sounds like a yes,” Peppercorn said.

  “Oh, good,” Bram said sarcastically.

  If she had thought Andersen was strange enough before, the next half hour made Poison realize that she had fallen far short of the mark. The cat’s powers of navigation were nothing short of phenomenal. He led them unerringly through a maze of corridors, up and down stairs, taking them along routes that were rarely used and hardly trafficked. They passed a few phaerie folk along the way – at least to begin with – but their presence was treated with disdain and they were ignored, which suited Poison fine.

  Eventually, they came to a small, innocuous door, recessed in an alcove in a deserted corridor. Andersen obviously intended them to go inside, so they did – and found themselves in a narrow squeezeway, only wide enough for them to pass through in single file. There was no light but that which filtered through a few distant grilles, rectangles of sun glowing in the blackness.

  “What is this place?” Bram asked.

  Poison shut the door behind her, plunging them into deeper dark. “At a best guess, I’d say we were between the walls.”

  “Between the walls,” Bram repeated flatly, prompting for elaboration.

  “A place as big as this needs airways between the rooms,” Poison explained. “For ventilation. Even phaeries need to breathe. Most of them, anyway.”

  “How do you know all that?” Bram asked, faintly irritated at seeming ignorant.

  “Remember I told you about that story, with the prince and the tigers? Later on, he used the ventilation system of the palace to find his way to the princess, by following the scent of her perfume. Then he stole her out from beneath the nose of the Vizier.”

  “That’s so romantic!” Peppercorn cheeped.

  “I’ll tell you the whole tale one day,” Poison promised, and was surprised to find that she meant it.

  “I think I should hear it as well,” Bram put in dryly. “Seems more like a survival manual than a story.”

  Poison didn’t reply to that one; it was a little too close to the bone. How could she articulate that strange sense that she had, that ever since Gull she had felt as if pieces of the stories she had read were coming to life around her?

  “Are you sure you know where you’re going?” she asked Andersen. Andersen gave an offended miaow in response.

  “He wandered into Maeb’s house from the Phaerie Realm, remember?” Peppercorn said. “He knows his way around.”

  “You mean he’s been here before?” Poison asked. “In the palace?”

  Peppercorn shrugged. “Why not? He seems to have a good idea of where he’s going, hmm? He could have lived here for years. He never told me.”

  “Is that right?” Poison asked Andersen; but the cat kept its secrets.

  Andersen had not done with them yet, however. The squeezeways ran for what seemed like miles, and went through many twists and turns. Soon they were hot and sweaty and covered in scrapes from the walls. The ornately wrought grilles alternated in height as they passed by them, affording glimpses of the palace’s rooms. They passed a kitchen swarming with needle-toothed pixies arguing over the preparation of food and swearing like sailors at each other. They saw a room plush with jewels and such a profusion of gold edging that it dazzled the eye. They peered out over a vast library, its aisles stretching away beneath them. But always Andersen hurried them on, hissing at them impatiently when they lagged.

  It was because they were hurrying so that Poison did not at first notice they had left Peppercorn behind. But then with a shiver of fright, she tugged on Bram’s shoulder to stop him. Andersen scuttled back to see what the problem was.

  “Wait here,” Poison whispered, conscious that their voices could be heard through the grilles by the phaeries in the rooms all around them. “I’ll go back.”

  She found Peppercorn just around the next corner, her fingers clenched in the fine ironwork of a grille, standing on tiptoes to gaze through it. Poison came up alongside her.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “Look,” Peppercorn cooed dreamily. “She’s so beautiful. A princess. Just like that story.”

  Poison rolled her eyes and then nudged her aside so she could humour the younger girl. Her scepticism evaporated, however, when she laid eyes on the lady in question.

  She was like a vision, something half-dreamt that had found its way to reality. Tall and slight, her face was a perfect oval, her hair falling down her back in streams of white and gold, stirring slowly as she moved, seeming to curl and sway with a life all its own. She wore a dress in tones that matched her hair, clinging to her slender figure, a fabric as light as air and which shimmered like the mist at the foot of a waterfall. Her skin was pale as milk and inhumanly perfect, and her features were alien, resembling those of a woman and yet not, seeming smoother somehow, as if she were moulded rather than born. Her eyes were pools of endless blue, with no pupils to mar their colour, and they were like the sky on a spring morning.

  Poison could hardly breathe. The phaerie woman was mesmerizing. She was standing alone in a room, waiting for something or someone, and yet even the slightest of movements that she made seemed to wrench at the heart. She sighed, and the sound was like the wind stirring fallen leaves in autumn, or birds taking flight. Poison could not help wondering who she was, why she was here, what she was waiting for . . . but with an effort of will she tore herself away from such thoughts. They had no time for idle fancy. Steeling herself against the temptation to gaze on the lady again, she grabbed Peppercorn by the wrist and pulled her away. Peppercorn made a small noise of complaint, but she did not resist. They rejoined the others, both of them feeling as if they had left a small part of themselves behind, that by sacrificing that beauty they had betrayed themselves.

  “Are you done gawking?” Bram said, bringing them back to earth.

  They went on through the squeezeways for what seemed like an age, and when finally Andersen stopped and they caught up with him, they were exhausted. He was sitting next to a grille that was just like dozens of other grilles they had passed, a barely visible silhouette in the gloom. Poison crouched down next to the cat and peered through.

  The room beyond was an elegantly furnished chamber, hung with tapestries of war and immaculate in its finery. It was empty.

  Poison frowned. “Andersen, why did you. . .” she began, and then trailed off as she heard the sound of approaching footsteps. She cast one last, suspicious glance at the cat and then returned her attention to the room beyond the grille.

&n
bsp; She could have predicted who would walk in then, even before she saw him. Andersen did know where he was going; he must have wandered these squeezeways long ago, back in the shadowy depths of his past.

  It was Aelthar who entered, and with him was Scriddle, his obsequious and prickly secretary. These were the Phaerie Lord’s chambers.

  “Shut the door, Scriddle,” Aelthar said. The tone of his voice betrayed his mood. He was angry, and short on patience.

  Scriddle did as he was told.

  “We must make plans,” Aelthar snapped suddenly, pacing the room. “This cannot go on.”

  “I agree,” Scriddle replied, his sharp head bobbing. “Something must be done.”

  “Humans!” Aelthar spat. Poison felt a thrill of fright.

  “They are indeed a most annoyingly pestilent breed, Lord,” Scriddle agreed. “May I ask if your private conferences with the other Lords bore any fruit?”

  “Ha!” Aelthar cried bitterly. “When have any of us been able to agree on anything? Grugaroth is still bitter about Myghognimar; he can barely suffer to be in the same room as me. The Umbilicus is so overcautious that it never acts at all. Only the Gomm has the will and the strength to be an ally to me in this matter, but it is like trying to chain a bull. He understands nothing of subtlety.”

  Poison felt Peppercorn burrowing in alongside her, trying to get to see what was going on. She shifted over a little to make way.

  “What’s happening?” Peppercorn whispered. Poison hushed her.

  “My Lord should not be too downhearted,” Scriddle said, raising an eyebrow above his round glasses. “There is still the issue of our visit to the Hierophant. Every Lord and Lady of the Realms will be there. And many are frightened by what the Hierophant is up to, Lord. They won’t stand for it.”

  “Of course they’re frightened! Who knows who will come out on top when the barrel is shaken?” Aelthar suddenly crossed the room to stand before the grille where Poison and Peppercorn watched. Peppercorn was about to make a noise of alarm when Bram’s glove clamped over her mouth.

  “How ridiculous it seems,” the Phaerie Lord mused. “Humans are the lowest rung on the ladder of the Realms, and yet a single one of them can inspire such panic. What is it about them, Scriddle? How is it that only they can become Hierophants?”

  Scriddle paused for a time before answering. “Perhaps they have something that the other races do not?” he suggested.

  “And what might that be?” Aelthar laughed, tossing his flame-red hair. “A complete inability to cooperate? A tendency to embark on long and pointless acts of genocide upon their own kind? I swear to you, even the animals of their Realm count higher in my estimation than humans do. Their gift of intelligence they have squandered by selfishness and barbarity. One day, the day they lose their precious guardian, I will march my forces into their lands and wipe them from existence, and I will be counted a hero by all for doing so.” He stamped to the other side of the room, exclaiming “Vermin!” as he went.

  “My Lord,” Scriddle said, adjusting his glasses with an embarrassed cough, “may I remind you that I myself am half human?”

  “And a shame it is,” Aelthar said. “Were you pure phaerie, I would have you as my right-hand man instead of merely a secretary. You have everything I ask for in a subject, Scriddle; but not the blood.”

  “I am honoured to have risen this far in your employ, my Lord,” Scriddle replied humbly. “I ask for no more.”

  “Well,” Aelthar said, taking a few breaths to calm himself after his tirade against humanity. “We must prepare a retinue. Assemble them in the library. We leave immediately for the Hierophant’s castle.”

  “Lord?” Scriddle queried, his ledger appearing in his hand and falling open. “There is one matter yet to attend to.”

  “What matter is that? Oh, the humans?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Need I even tell you?”

  “I would be loath to second-guess my master and choose incorrectly,” Scriddle said smoothly.

  “Kill them, Scriddle. Kill them, of course.”

  Poison felt her blood run cold.

  “I suspected as much,” Scriddle replied, snapping his ledger shut; and with that the two of them left the room.

  Peppercorn and Poison stood up in the narrow squeezeway and looked at each other.

  “Kill us?” Peppercorn squeaked.

  “That’s the trouble with phaeries,” Bram muttered. “You can’t trust them as far as you can spit.”

  “They’ll find out we’re gone!” Peppercorn said, her voice rising as she began to panic. “They’ll come looking for us!”

  “Don’t worry, Peppercorn,” Poison said, her violet eyes shining in the hot darkness. “We won’t be here.”

  There was iron in her voice. The Phaerie Lord’s words had shaken her – not because she feared for their safety, but because she knew now that he intended to betray them. He had never meant to give Azalea back and honour his side of the bargain. Poison’s entire plan up until now had relied on Aelthar returning her sister of his own volition. Now she saw that it had been a false hope. For an instant, she teetered on the brink of despair; but then a new resolution took the field, and dragged her back. If the Phaerie Lord would not give her Azalea, Poison would take her. By whatever means necessary. And while she herself was too weak to threaten a being as mighty as Aelthar, she had learned by now that there were other beings that he did fear.

  “We won’t be here?” Bram echoed. “Where will we be?”

  “You heard him say that they’re heading for the Hierophant’s castle,” said Poison. “I’ve been meaning to have a word with him anyway. And by the sounds of it, we’ll be safer there than anywhere. At least he’s human.”

  “You want us to stow away in the Phaerie Lord’s retinue?” Bram asked.

  “You are sharp,” Poison said. “That’s exactly what I want.”

  Bram ruminated for a moment. “I wish I had any better ideas,” he grumbled.

  “After what we’ve been through so far, you’re worried about a little bit of sneaking around?” Poison grinned, slapping him encouragingly on the shoulder. “How hard can it be?”

  Andersen mewed sarcastically at her feet.

  The Hierophant’s castle stood on the rocky heights of a mountain, glowering darkly in the storm-lashed night. Rain swept across the surrounding peaks, and the blanket of black cloud was periodically underlit by a silent flicker of lightning, before thunder would barrel across the landscape and into the distance.

  The castle was the only sign of life in this bleak Realm; it crouched massive and alone, sprawling over the mountaintop, a shiver of turrets and crenellations, parapets and spires and towers, all carved from the stone of the mountains. It had been built on uneven ground, and so it was uneven in shape, following the contours of the cruel, bare rock and giving it a lopsided appearance, with its western wing set lower than the main body of the castle. In the darkness, it was a shadow of deepest black against the sky, and dozens of lights burned inside its silhouette, a scattering of man-made stars in the storm.

  If Poison had a plan in mind for secreting herself and her companions among the Phaerie Lord’s retinue, it turned out to be unnecessary. Still thinking along human lines, she had envisioned a train of carriages such as the coach that had brought them here; but the ways between the Realms were not bound by the laws of distance.

  Remembering Aelthar’s words, they had backtracked along the squeezeways until they came to the vast library that they had seen through a grille earlier. With a little muscle and some wriggling on Bram’s part, they had dislodged it and slipped through, clambering down a bookcase to one of the balconies that ringed the aisles. There, they had found a place to hide until Aelthar arrived shortly afterwards.

  Poison’s heart sank. His retinue consisted only of ten phaeries, four of which were
guards and the rest an assortment of naiads, undines and dryads. Scriddle was there, practically twitching with nervousness and irritation; he had no doubt discovered that the humans had slipped his clutches by now. Poison wondered whether he had told Aelthar or not.

  Still, the small satisfaction of the discomfort she had caused Scriddle did nothing to ameliorate the disappointment she felt. There was no way they could hide among Aelthar’s retinue. The best they could hope for was to follow them and see where they led.

  As they watched, Aelthar approached a great book that lay closed on a stand at the end of an aisle beneath them. It was enormous, bound in faded red leather with its pages yellowed. Aelthar opened it without ceremony, found a page somewhere in the middle, and began to read from it. Poison craned to hear, but the words were in a language that she did not know. It was only when Andersen hissed softly that she began to notice that something was happening.

  The cat had its hackles up and was pressed low to the floor, burrowing under Peppercorn as if he feared the roof falling on his head. Peppercorn herself was cringing, and loose hairs were beginning to lift away from her blonde curls, drawn upwards by static. The air seemed to tighten around them, and Poison found that she had to labour to draw breath into her lungs. Bram was frowning darkly beneath the broad brim of his hat, and his moustache was trembling. There was a sensation of building energy, registered on senses that they did not even know they had; everything seemed to flex at once; and then it was done, and normality was restored. Poison exhaled a low sigh of relief.

  “What happened then?” Bram muttered. “Some kind of phaerie magick?”

  “Perhaps,” Poison said, but she was watching Aelthar as he closed the book and then stalked out of the library, his retinue assembling to follow.

  “Come on,” said Bram. “We’d better get after them.”

  They hurried down to the ground level of the vast library, by which time the phaeries had departed through a huge set of double doors. Their footsteps tapped in the echoing stillness, muffled by the weight of knowledge contained in the books that surrounded them. When they reached the doors, Poison opened one of them a crack and peered through. She looked back at the others with a puzzled expression. Then she pushed it open and they left the library, and found themselves in an entirely unexpected place.