Going Under (36 page)

"As well as you can be when you've no idea what's going on," the doll nodded. "Which is very well indeed. Want me to take another look? I think I'll make it with some extra stuffing. I like rosehips. And cranberries." There was a pause in which Teazle shook his head and all of them felt a dizziness that wasn't quite inside or outside them.

"No," Madrigal said. "That's all."

"Awww. ..." the doll began to whine but she picked it up and tossed it into the sword-fire where it was instantly crisped to black ashes. A tension that had been drawing across them all like a fine wire eased suddenly and everyone let out their breath.

"Better quick and clean when the deal's paid out," Malachi said to Teazle. Then to Madrigal, "I don't think they know anything about Jack between them. Can we break in or sneak in?"

"You might," she said. "But if you're caught he'll skin you alive. And what will you do? The deal is sworn, the doll says. They must go through with it now."

She had an old-school dogmatism, Malachi thought, which he'd once admired but which now he was rankled by. Yet the magic of faery itself was old school, and implacable with it, part of the prices of its power. If Zal and Lila had agreed to tilt at Jack's windmill, then tilt they must. But he wasn't about to let them go to it without any chance.

He said as much and waited as Teazle asked questions and Nixas filled him in. Madrigal added at the end, "It isn't that Jack has to know the right question or the answer to it. When the charm worked ..." she frowned and struggled, scratched her head. "Damn this time!" she said fiercely, slamming the flat of her hand down on the softening ground. "And damn me for never thinking to write a thing down when I did still know it! I wanted to tell you a thing that was so useful ... something about the grail, yes, that's the word, graal, grail ... it has something to do with this version of us in this region, why Jack is Giantkiller and I am Madrigal and not May, or Maia or Maeve or Mab or Fructalia or Anumati or Mama Ocllo or Zislbog or Nantosuelta. I know it's about that but not what! Jack must be the same way. Maybe he will not remember why it's important either." She stretched her brown hands out in a helpless gesture. "But the fact is that whatever he's become Jack has enormous power now. Every faery except myself is in his mantle. He controls them all, shapes them into his story. The old charm may never work as it was meant. His intents have changed us."

"What happened last year?" Malachi asked, full of foreboding.

"Midwinter came and he was dead. There were no knights of course, never are. This time he died of poisoning from a bad belly of pork, as usual at the stroke of midwinter night. He was laid to rest on the hill summit at Islacathra, rose again in thirty days from the grave, and wandered to his final place, all to order. This year it was in the old bear cave at Yarrowkeld. I found his bones in the springtime and kissed him back to life. Hm, he seems to like that cave. Been there dozens of times recently. Made me start to wonder if he's forgetting the region as well as the rest." She stared into the sword flames intently.

"But why do you bother?" Teazle asked. "Why not leave him dead and let the others free?"

"It's not like that," Madrigal said. "If he stays dead then they all die. They're of him. He'd have to release them willingly if they were to be free. Killing him kills them all."

The demon frowned. "How annoying." After a second he asked, "If you die here, do you die everywhere? I never heard of a faery dying."

"We don't die, we just forget ourselves," Malachi said quietly. "You wouldn't be killing anyone in the sense that you mean it. Other versions of us in other dimensions would continue, only this part of our selves would be ended. But that is still a significant act with unforeseeable consequences. And those who died could not come here again."

"Cut off?" Teazle suggested.

"Yes."

"Oh. Well, if you don't want to risk stealthing in I'll nip in and out before that damn elf gets any further ahead of me."

"Jack will see you," Nixas said. "Your demon aether is too odd not to notice instantly. Cat should go."

"Just one more question," Teazle said, leaning closer to his fire. "What happens if Zal and Lila mess up the quest and lose the deal?"

"Jack will kill them," Madrigal said. "If they were faeries he'd just imprison them in his ice, but they're alien so he'll probably just kill them. There was ... another thing instead, but I forgot that too."

"What if he can't kill them?" Teazle asked. "Maybe he'll die first, if they get past the time."

Madrigal just laughed.

"Could we all fight him?"

She laughed longer. "You've never fought a faery battle, clearly. Jack wields the power of all he has subsumed. You cannot fight the might of so many fey united under one will. No."

"I can," Teazle said. "Rather, I will."

She shook her head.

The demon glowered and his tone became as frigid as the air. "Ears akimbo, Fruitpop. I didn't come here to listen to you talk about my lovers dying just by accident because we ran into the wrong end of town," Teazle snorted, some fire issuing from his nostrils. "What kind of joke is that? We ain't in Demonia now. You even look like you wouldn't care. Aha, you don't care, do you? It's because of that accursed key, isn't it? You don't want things to change. That's why you're keeping us out here in the piss freezing snow and ice while time slips away and we do nothing. You even give Malachi here the soppy eye now and again so he purrs and stays close like a good little kitty."

"Cool your jets!" Malachi said, finding it coming out as more of a snarl than he intended. "Have a bit of respect. You won't survive some kind of assault on him."

"You severely underestimate my assassin's powers," Teazle snarled in reply, tiny spurts of flame beginning to poke through his coating of black dust like spikes. "It is hard to fight what you do not know is there."

"Jack controls time within the city," Madrigal said, perfectly calm, her face composed and thoughtful. "He is also, unless he wills it, bodiless, a trick he learned just to avoid those whose powers were like yours I'm afraid. Sadly I doubt he's forgotten that ... oh ... it's on the tip of my ... that's it! Jack's body. He has to be corporeal to die on midwinter night. Usually he will take form at sunset within the palace and take part in some ritual feast or drinking competition until the hour of midnight. You might do the honour of killing him then but that will only make you a necessary condition of his legend, not a challenge to it. The cycle will continue unbroken. No. Force will not help. Believe me," and she lifted her golden eyes and stared Teazle in the face, "many of us have tried it. It's no slight on your glory to meet the immovable object. I understand your frustration. Consider me. I've lived with it more ages than your city has stood."

"Now I know how Lila feels," Teazle said after a moment of spouting fire that reluctantly died back and became black once again. Defeat really did not sit well on him. He smouldered, yellowish smoke starting to seep out of his shoulders. "What did she say-'if it's not a technicality, its taxes, magical law, or just bastards out to get you ...' What do we do then?"

"I will take some useful knowledge ... Madrigal, do you actually have any useful knowledge?" Malachi asked.

Nixas shivered as they waited and Madrigal rubbed her forehead with both hands. "Those horses are nearby. Followed us."

"I know," Madrigal said. "Knew they would. I would have. And yes, I have one piece of useful knowledge you can take. Jack likes stories. He's heard all of ours a thousand times over and over again. He will probably delay as long as possible if there is something to be learned or known. His boredom is his weakness now, I would bet."

"You have no idea at all about the answer or the question that would free him?"

"It is a mystery," she said.

Teazle slumped.

"No, I mean it is a mystery in the old sense, a metaphor for something that the questioner must know, when Jack does not. It is the kind of question that opens the locks of the mind and creates a new reality. The kind of question that has an answer that can only be pointed to by the question, but never told. I know that much."

"There are not so many of those," Nixas said.

"I doubt the sound of one hand clapping is going to do it," Malachi sighed, getting up and taking a last turn in front of the sword's radiant heat. "But I'll take it."

"Good luck," Madrigal said, and she reached into her furs and took out something that she gave him. He opened his hand out of its strange paw and found himself holding one perfect peach.

"Give this to them," she said. "Whoever eats it will have a part of my protection from Jack for a short time. Half of the peach is only half of the power so ... well ..." she didn't finish. "We'll wait for you here."

"Hurry, I'm bored," the demon grumbled.

"Here," Nixas reached out and gripped Malachi's furry forearm for a moment. He felt a warm current of energy pass into him from the contact. It was warming, heartening.

"It's been fun," Teazle said. "Keep the sword for now. I've got others." He stood up, his two eyes suddenly rising, the dust on him glittering as it shifted. There was a sudden bang as the air rushed to fill the vacuum he'd left behind.

"But ..." Madrigal started.

"Demons," Naxis said. Madrigal nodded and then shrugged the matter off.

Malachi slipped away without another word. He hated goodbyes and he had a feeling this was one of the lasting kind. The irony that they should stumble here so soon after Sorcha's (to him) senseless end wasn't lost on him. First one, then the multitude, he thought, or if we are lucky, just three.

I saw three ships come sailing in ...

Did he hear it or did he just imagine? He shivered beneath his thick fur and crept onward, silently as he knew how, though the space between his shoulder blades was tingling and the hair there on end, expecting arrows or worse.

The faery house was much bigger on the inside than the outside. Inside it was a perfect replica of an elf home, so Zal said.

"In fact it's my last home in Alfheim," he said, tension making his jaw jut forward. "This is worse than I imagined. The bastard has tendrils in me and I didn't even feel it."

Lila looked around it with new interest-she'd never seen much of anything personal to Zal, only the kinds of things that you could wear or stuff in a suitcase. She was astounded to discover it was not so much of the elven houses she'd seen before, and more like a grass hut, decorated in the style of any common wayhouse; pleasantly made but purely functional items on a dirt floor. A couple of nicely crafted plain cupboards. A firepit in the centre with a smokehole above it.

"You make the Amish look like Saudi princes," she said after a few seconds surveying it all.

"I've made up for it since," he said.

Then she turned to face him in the firelight. With the onset of the deepest part of the night he'd become completely shadow, something she'd never seen in Dar, the only other shadowkin-blood elf she'd ever known. Zal was actually semitransparent, all tones reduced to just a few contrasts so that he seemed more like a large coloured drawing than a solid object. "I never saw this before," she said, nervous and trying not to be.

"I never was this before," he said, looking down at himself. "I don't feel the fire. I'm not cold. I feel ... light." He snorted humourlessly. "How typical. The only chance we get to be alone before facing a terrible fate and suddenly I'm insubstantial."

Lila reached out to touch him and watched as her fingertips passed right through his arm, not just his andalune body. She felt something, like a warmer kind of air, a slight vibration, nothing more. She snatched her hand back quickly and found herself rubbing her fingers before she knew what she was doing. "Weird," she said, feeling a catch in her voice.

"You're telling me," he said and suddenly his shoulders slumped. "What a mess. I hate to say it but I honestly think there's no way out of this."

"We could run."

"Where to? Anyway, Jack'll just move with us."

"We can try killing him."

"I've got my doubts about that. Even running the gauntlet of this part of his legend-this entire region is derailed by whatever magic is keeping it in place."

"You're serious?"

"We're here because this is the lock," Zal said.

"For the ..." she couldn't finish as the imp slapped his hand across her face sharply-it being too small to effectively stop her mouth.

"Listen up, sweetcheeks," Thingamajig said, hopping down next to the fireplace and rubbing his hands together. "We don't mention the things we don't mention in case we need them later. Savvy? Love is all around us, and all that."

Lila rubbed her face and scowled but she waited to see if he had anything to say. Zal just stared at him with misgiving.

"Fortunately for youse guys this faery hocus has no effect on me as a bona fide imp. I've got immunity from external bamboozlements of the magical variety. It's part of my job description, innit? How would I cut through everyone else's crap if I had to suffer through the endless crap they keep dealing? So, before you go getting even more depressed by not inexpensively done but frankly derivative levels of supernatural winter and suspension of every shred of independent life, let me notify you of some salient facts." He squatted down in the fire's edge and let the flames lick up and around him, beaming with cheer. "First off, you can't beat Jack at his own game on his own ground. Your flimsy mate here is correct on that one. But second of all, Jack is not the only player in town. Anyhoo my main point is-the thing we don't mention is the way out of all of this. There probably isn't another one, even if you get his quest question all right, and incidentally I've been here before and the question is ... the answer is ... the question ... look, you're supposed to ask him what the nature of the grail is. Then he figures out that the nature of the grail is self-realisation. That triggers an immediate enlightenment and he passes over into a new form, at which point whoever asked the question gets to take his place, unless they happen to be enlightened, and then I guess the post is vacant until some other schmo comes along or until the region requires another form of Jack himself to spawn in order to maintain the balance of power. You'd have to ask the Middle Missus about that."