Going Under (38 page)

"You killed yerself," the imp said immediately into the waiting moment. "They meant to put all that fear in you and drive you to die in the winter, scapegoat, so's they didn't have to. But you were stronger. You killed yourself and you walked out free. Am I right?"

"And I slayed them all, though they lived on without harm," he agreed, swinging the sling lightly. "And they became the living dead. That is my question. That is my answer. It is my mystery. But only one who is truly alive can lift my burden here. And that isn't you, liar, cheater, coward. Is it?"

The imp shrank back down, his head hanging. "No," he said. "Though I ..." but under Jack's straight stare he simply repeated no.

"And you," Jack turned suddenly to Zal. "Shade of Ruinous Intent ... do you know why the faeries call your kind that name? Shall I tell you?"

"I know," Zal said, by contrast his voice as deep and powerful as a resonant drum. "I found the spirits of the Ruined, in Zoomenon. They told the story. We are the result of a long-ago hate made real. But we are not hate."

"Not all of you," Jack said with wry satisfaction. "I'll warrant you never met the ones that were. And the outcasts who died-those you speak of-will never tell you of what was made then, because they were killed before they could know it. Truly the sorry dream that spawned you ran its course and died a long time past. But did you never think there was anything more than your flawed races scattered throughout Alfheim, cursed and reviled, trying to live two lives, vampire and farmer at once, monster and monster-keeper? You were merely the weaklings that the makers let live, so that their opposition would think the entire effort a terrible failure, and never keep looking for the ones they succeeded in manufacturing. In time perhaps the remaining few who knew the truth have forgot it." He shrugged, a hard and unsympathetic shedding of any vestige of compassion. His face became narrower, meaner. "Forgetting is easy when it's assisted. We faeries like to help. So, girl," he turned to Lila, "when you wondered what power my wife held and her doubt about what lies under us ... you had the right. It would be wisdom to doubt the wisdom of using what you have there and unlocking the Faery Hoard and all its Halls."

Zal was standing openmouthed. If Jack's hatred had affected him he showed no sign of it. He was entirely focused on a single thought. "Wait. You're saying that the Shadowkin weren't the intended result of the experiment?"

"Look at you! Of course they weren't," Jack scoffed, flinging his hair out of his eyes and coming forward to jab at the fire, poking the imp and smirking as it dodged among the embers. "They were merely the abortions of it."

Zal pondered a moment, "How do you know?"

"It was of my time," Jack said, hunkering down onto his heels. The rough clothes he wore were full of holes and coated in filth; dark and scarred skin showed through the gaps. There wasn't a piece of him that wasn't covered in fine dark purple lines of shining healed wounds. "And in my time we walked your world as easily as our own. The others too."

"And the successes are down there?" Lila asked, pointing at the floor. Zal's detachment from Jack's anger helped clear her head. Her chest ached, though she thought it was probably just the cold air.

Jack the boy looked up at her and grinned. "I'd bet so. Though even the lovely Mad won't know for sure. When the lock was made we lost contact with all of Under, and over time we forgot most everything we knew. Like every other faery. And now nobody wants to know again in case the lesson's bad, though faery's less than half of what it was and less than a fraction of what it could be. Undo the lock and who knows what'll come out? Who knows what we'll remember and then, what become? Maybe the mystery of the Queen's magic will at last be answered. Perhaps we shut the world down to save ourselves, as the cowards believe." He glanced backwards in the direction of the clustered and silent groups of fey. "Or maybe it'll all be revealed a silly game over nothing, a bet lost, a card trick whose forfeit was owned by the Hoodoo and couldn't be undone. Either is as likely. But the fact is that I don't care about the consequences. I'll have the lock undone and be free and anyone who stands before me be damned." He looked at her with complete directness and then, with unmistakable meaning, back at those behind him. Then he turned to Zal. "You might once have had a shot at me," he said. "But not now. You've lost your demon heart."

Lila looked at Zal, waiting for the rebuttal, but instead she saw him look down and away. "What?"

"I didn't like to say ..." Thingamajig piped up from among the logs.

Lila kicked the fire and sent him sprawling across the bare rock amid a shower of cinders and sparks. "What?" She looked questioningly at Zal who met her gaze with heavy-lidded eyes.

"Tell her," Jack suggested, grinning hugely. "Tell her why we ain't brothers no more."

"Since Sorcha..." Zal began with difficulty. "Remember I told you I knew who was to blame?"

"But that ..." Lila touched her chest, feeling the dense, silent weight of Tath start to stir. In fact as she turned her attention to him she found the most peculiar sensation of heaviness around her heart. It was almost choking.

meant /eimse f Tath said and suddenly, with his speaking, an
awareness of him flooded her. His agitation and fear were so palpable
she staggered and fell onto her knees. Ala, somet/ my is / a enin y to me.
Aince we came lrere. ffeelas ifg'am no lon yer able to stay Mere. Aave to leave.

Zal frowned, "Are you all right? I didn't think it would ..."

"It's not you," she gasped, hand on her chest hard pressing, as if that would help. "And it's not your fault ... you said so ... no demon would ever take the responsibility for it ..."

"Saying and feeling ent the same," the imp put in, backing away quickly on his bottom and feet among the ashes.

"Since then," Zal said, continuing to stare at Lila with concern, moving closer to her. "I feel like ..

"Like you want to die, in spite of all the demon fire inside you," Jack said. His smile was wicked. "And so the bad spirit enters in. Corrupted. So you won't be trading places with me or cutting my heart out on the cold, cold rocks of liberation now, will you?"

Zal stared at him with honest hatred. "No."

"Which brings us to what troubles our little girl here," Jack said, looking at Lila and licking his lips softly. "Our pretty little thing in her pretty tattered dress holding her heart out in her hands and asking us to love her love her ..." he held his own hands out with a plaintive, pitiful look on his face, mocking her. "Our girl with the unshakeable imp who'd have us believe she's just two steps from freedom but always manages never to tell the useful thing that might let her take those steps, selfless little being that he is. How she loves to believe in all your innocence-even mine-as if we had good intent and that is all that mattered. Our tin soldier with the wall eyes. Come on, show us what you're hiding there ..."

Malachi, who'd been silent and still throughout all of this, suddenly was on his feet, growling at Jack. His teeth flashed white, shining. Instantly Moguskul came barrelling forwards. Within a moment the two huge fey were tumbling around each other in a fight, close locked, huge jaws open, claws out.

Zal could only stare at Lila however, trying desperately to touch her, but able to do nothing at all, as in front of him she began to struggle for breath, clawing at her chest and throat. She fell forward onto one hand, mouth open, gagging for breath, eyes wide as the fire reflected perfectly in their mirror surfaces. Beneath the snarling of the beast fight her choking moments were all but lost.

Then Malachi broke free of Moguskul's grip and cowered, accepting a submissive position so he could watch and see Lila rather than try to keep fighting. The bear snarled over him but their conflict was suspended.

"What the hell is going on?" snapped the imp, his curiosity overcoming his worries. He danced forwards, peering at Lila. Then he looked at Jack.

The boy Jack was sitting with a smug smile on his face. He'd put down his sling and in one hand he held a small bowl, rough and ready, that looked like it had been beaten out of a single piece of metal by a smith in training. His was rubbing the inside of the bowl with his fingers and muttering under his breath, all the while looking at them with knowing amusement. All over his skin the hideous scars began to ooze tiny droplets of blood.

"What's that?" the imp demanded in a shriek. "Your wife's bowl ... ah ... oh ... you stole it from her ..."

Jack stopped his work long enough to scowl and shout back at Thingamajig furiously, "I did not steal it! It's mine. Was always mine!" Lila took a sudden breath. Then he abruptly remembered him self and started up again. He rubbed the blood off his exposed skin and began to smear it around the inside of the bowl.

"The cauldron ..." Malachi said suddenly in his half-human voice, bleak and semistrangled by his own beast shape. "I thought no magic like that was left here."

"I found it!" Jack gasped, laughing as he suddenly set the little bowl down on the fire and scooted backwards on his bottom like a real child. "And though Mad says it must be hers I say it's mine now. Finders keepers."

The bowl grew as soon as it started being heated by the flames. Within a minute it was over a metre across and filled with an opaque, thick liquid of uncertain colour that surged and rippled as if full of fish.

"Come on everyone!" Jack cried to those behind him, as if leading a game charge. "Put your hearts into it. Don't you want to see what's been smuggled in here in this cheater's game? Come on come on! First the discovery, then the forfeits!"

"Nuuuugh!" Lila thought she was dying. The pain in her chest became indescribably severe. She was aware of oxygen being dumped into her blood automatically by her skin but only because she didn't feel suffocation and the information was blasted into her awareness by the Al. Other than that the only thing she could feel was this rending agony, and heat.

What the hell? She said to Tath.

ft is tyre time, he said. Y am not rieaiin this time.

Through a red haze she saw a figure step out of the cauldron. It was a young diurnal elf, male and naked. The face with its chilly hauteur and fine, delicate bones, was unmistakable. It was Tath.

There was a sudden, sharp sensation of ripping, and then the pain was gone. The elf staggered one step and then straightened up, blinking in surprise and shivering with the cold, his long, near white hair swinging around his shoulders. He gasped and clutched his arms about him, gripping his own body with sudden strength, an expression of wonder and pleasure evident on his face even as he backed away from Jack's crouched figure towards Lila and Zal.

"What the f ..." the imp began, its mouth hanging open as wide as possible. Thingamajig turned to Lila, hands on hips. "You had that in there all that time and I never even knew?" His mouth worked soundlessly for a time before more words managed to come out. "Here I am trying to help you and you're keeping entire people from me? Right in front of me? Gods, my poor heart!" It clutched its own chest. "I feel stabbed to the core! How could you? And while we're on the subject, actually, how could you?"

Lila held out Sarasilien's amulet.

"I thought that was junk," the imp said, hugely disappointed. "Hideous too, though a gentleman never says such things."

Lila was busy ignoring him. She stripped off her T-shirt, which the fire had mostly dried now, and gave it quickly to Tath, who put it on backwards in his haste. It came down to his hips. He crouched down close to the fire, his hands held out in front of him towards the flames. He was staring at his own hands fixedly, jaw clenched as he inspected every finger, every nail with fascinated obsession. She stood, both hands pressed to her chest. She felt bereft, and confused, as if she'd had part of herself taken away. Her whole body felt lighter, and emptier. She stared at Tath with something like hunger and envy. She heard herself whisper a word under her breath so quietly nobody heard it, "No-o-o." Shock froze her in the moment.

"I notice you're not surprised," the imp accused Zal, who was staring at Tath with a complicated expression that contained both rage and envy. Then he glanced at Lila and Thingamajig started to say something but the imp was drowned out by the rising chatter and babble from the massed fairies beyond the firelight who had now seen what else Lila was wearing around her neck.

"The key, the key!" came the cry, rapidly whispered and called from thousands of mouths. And then, not long after there were other mutterings which Lila could just hear ...

"It's Tatty's dress ... look, it is ... what's she doing with that ..." and more like it.

Across the fireplace Jack was laughing. "A hidden soldier and a stolen dress equals a hefty lie. All our deals are annulled. Hear my new offer, then!" He jumped to his feet, his limbs stiff with gleeful violent energies. "One of you must find the courage to ask my question and take the consequences. One of you must surrender to join my gleaming throng. One of you must provide me with a worthy hunt. One of you must give up your heart's desire to me. For nothing less will I let you live until the midnight hour when that," he pointed at the key, "will be the sole object of my interest regardless of our former sport."

"And if we say no?" Lila asked into the stillness that followed his declaration.

"Then you can die here and now and I will take the key and have no more trouble with you," Jack said.

Malachi sidled around the fire, keeping himself between his companions and the slavering bulk of Moguskul until he was with them. They turned to each other.

"He's impervious to iron. He took the charm of the Tinky- wink ..." the huge cat made a nod in the direction of the faery throng. "... among countless other small but important powers." He looked at Lila and she saw he'd read her thoughts accurately. She let the cold iron rounds slide back into the magazine silently. "Much as I hate it, I have to suggest you agree to his deal. This way there's a chance to return later, to find new trades, to make new courses and tricks. Otherwise you will find yourselves fighting all the fey."