The Sterkarm Handshake (15 page)

“You're all right, son,” Bryce said. Copying Andrea, he said,
“Brow, brow.
”

Andrea was thankful that they were moving at last, until her eye was caught by something outside the car, and she was shocked to see it was Toorkild, Isobel and many others, keeping pace with the car. Her heart squeezed with fright—why had they been so quick to assume the car would be faster when, on this ground, a horse might be? But then, the car might make up for its slowness on the hillside when they reached the valley. She bit back the urge to yell at Windsor to hurry. He had enough to do managing the car on this slope.

Windsor's teeth were clenched tight, and he breathed hard through his nose. He was concentrating on getting his car back down the hillside in one piece, and tried to put aside the anger he felt at the way he'd been railroaded into this piece of stupidity. He could have done without the heavy breathing from the back; he could have done without the memory of the severed hand dangling from the saddlebow. His hands felt weaker than they should on the wheel, and the muscles of his legs trembled. His eyes were beginning to ache from their fixed stare.

Keep your foot off the clutch, right off. Second gear is all that's needed, acceleration low. A sudden level bit of ground and ease up the acceleration, ease it up, keep the engine revs level—and then another steep bit. Christ, nearly bloody vertical! A vertiginous view through the windshield into the valley below, but keep your foot off the brake. Don't lock the wheels on this surface, for God's sake! Ease up on the acceleration—but then it would get so steep that gravity began tugging the car downward, pulling the engine over faster and faster—then he had to risk a touch of the brake, but not slamming them on. God's sake, don't panic and slam them on! A light touch, ease off, ease on again, keep the wheels free.

It began to seem that time was being rewound, and played over and over again, to prevent them ever reaching the bottom of the mountain, but each slow revolution of the wheels dragged them closer and closer to more level ground …

Windsor changed into third gear, and the car bounded forward, jolting, lurching, jouncing, despite its superb suspension, leaving the walkers behind. Per bounced on the backseat, and his hard-caught breath was knocked out of him. His head slumped, open-mouthed, against Andrea.

“Christ!” Bryce said. “Give us some warning!”

“Do you want to get there fast or not?”

Andrea searched for the pulse in the hollow of Per's throat, and held back tears and panic as she failed to find it. Then it jumped against her fingertips, so fast that each tiny beat crowded on the next in a light butterfly flutter. “Per? Per?” Her only comfort was that the harsh, noisy breaths had started again. His eyes weren't fully closed, but he wasn't conscious. “Don't argue! Just
hurry
, please!”

Bryce put his hand on her arm. “You do realize … even if we get him to a hospital, it might not be any use.”

She looked at him, tears running from her eyes, Per's head under her chin.

Bryce's remark struck Windsor too as he rocked and jolted the car over the rough ground beside the river, heading for the ford. His brain was working fast, keyed up by the effort of guiding the car. It jumped backward and forward between the ground and boulders ahead, the mechanics of the car, and what had been said earlier.
Save his son, and Old Sterkarm will do anything you want.

He should have seen—would have seen if it hadn't been for the all the confusion—what a great idea it actually was to bring young Sterkarm through to the 21st. It would give him all the leverage he needed with Old Sterkarm. He didn't trust the old savage's gratitude, but what was Old Sterkarm going to do while his son was with the Elves? Sit up and beg, roll over, play dead and anything else he was told to do, that was what.

It didn't really matter if Young Sterkarm lived or died. Not in the short term, anyway, though obviously, in the long term it would be better if he lived. He called over his shoulder, “How is he?”

It was Bryce who answered. “Alive.”

Windsor drove the car along the riverbank as fast as he could, which was still little more than ten miles an hour except for short, jolting bursts. He slowed right down again to negotiate the slope down to Bedes Water, and bounced the car slowly over the rocks in the bottom of the river, before grinding up the opposite bank in bottom gear. Then there was more slow maneuvering around the boulders beside the river before the big steel fence of the FUP compound could be seen through the windshield. As the car crawled up the slope, Windsor pounded on the horn. The blaring noise made Per gasp and move his head on Andrea's arm.

The guards opened the gates of the compound and waved them through. Windsor drove across the compound and up the ramp onto the platform. He leaned across the car and wound down the window as a guard opened the door from the office. “I want to go through now! Now! Is that okay?”

The guard leaned back into the office, shouted at someone, and then nodded. The green light came on beside the Tube at the same time. Windsor drove forward, and the plastic strips slithered and scratched over the car. They were in the Tube, with its white tiles and gray lighting, and the plastic strips at the other end screening the twenty-first century.

Andrea felt none of the awe she usually felt for the Tube. She just wanted to be out of the other side while Per was still alive.

Seconds, and five hundred years later, when the plastic strips were rustling over the car again, and its nose was tipping down the ramp toward the gravel drive of Dilsmead Hall, she could still feel the fast, light, fluttering pulse under her fingers.

At the bottom of the ramp, Windsor changed gear, put his foot down, and the car sped away along the smooth, flat drive. “Now we'll make up time! Still alive? Here.” From the dashboard he took a mobile phone and passed it back over his shoulder. Bryce took it. “Phone the hospital. Let 'em know we're coming.”

Crouched in the space between the seats, Bryce dialed the operator and asked to be put through to the hospital. Andrea barely listened. She was mindlessly counting Per's breaths, losing count constantly, but starting again. Her legs were cramped, her arm and shoulder ached from Per's weight, their flesh bruised against her bones, but she would stay in that position for the rest of the day and night if she had to.

Windsor broke the speed limit in the suburban streets surrounding the Hall, until he reached the ring road that encircled the city. The hospital was built on the ring road, a little out of the city center, and Windsor drove so fast that they pulled in through the hospital gates scarcely more than ten minutes after arriving at Dilsmead Hall.

Windsor drew up outside the entrance to emergency. Orderlies, nurses and a doctor were already waiting, with a wheeled stretcher. An orderly opened the car's back door.

Andrea found people pressing against her as they leaned into the car. She was still trying to support the weight of Per's head and shoulders, but another man was trying to take him from her. Bryce was lifting his legs and saying, “Let me take him. Andrea, let me—”

There didn't seem to be anywhere she could squeeze to get out of the way. “Oh careful, careful—don't drop him!”

She didn't quite understand how Per was taken from the car, but obviously the nurses and doctors knew what they were doing. When there was space for her to stumble out onto the concrete, Per was on a gurney, and she was in time to see a breathing mask clapped over his face. The gurney was pushed away, fast, into the hospital. As if she were tied to it, Andrea ran after. Even if the thought had entered her head, she couldn't have stayed behind.

Windsor jumped out of the car, ready to give orders, but found that no one needed them. Everyone, including Bryce, had vanished into the hospital. He turned back to his car, meaning to drive it away and park it—and saw that his hubcaps were missing.

The Sterkarms, the damned, light-fingered, conniving, ungrateful Sterkarms, had stolen his hubcaps.

8

21st Side: In Elf-Land

Per was in his father's hall, drifting among the people there like the smoke, like a ghost. He could see their mouths opening, laughing, shouting, but heard nothing.

He must be drunk, the walls and ceilings spun so, and he wasn't standing, but lying. Under his back, solid, holding him up, was the earth. A bird was calling
chip, chip, chip,
on and on and on. The sun was shone red through his closed lids, and he lifted his hand to shade his eyes, but it was held, tangled in his sleeve.

Quite clearly, a little irritated, someone said, “Don't rile about.” A touch on his forehead. “Go back to sleep.”

He tried to open his eyes, but the light was too dazzling and his lids too heavy. He sighed and shifted, dozed, and then knew he was wrapped in his blankets, in his bower.

But all the sounds were wrong. There was that insistent
bip, bip, bip
… He had never heard the sound before. He lay listening to it with closed eyes, frowning a little. It wasn't a bird: No bird made that call. It wasn't a wind or water sound, or an animal sound, or anything he could tell.

And everything else was too quiet. There should have been a murmurous din made of voices talking and shouting; animals moving and bleating, lowing, barking, clucking and screeching; pots and pans being walloped, buckets clanked. There should have been small, close sounds of birds and mice moving in the thatch above, and Cuddy sighing and shifting as she kept guard beside his bed.

Instead, beneath that monotonous
bip, bip, bip
was a discomforting silence, like the silence in the hills when you stood still, and the noise of your own movements, which had been loud in your ears, stopped too. Then there was nothing but the deep, soft, echoing silence that the hills held among their folds.

Bip, bip, bip.

Everything was wrong. Under his back was something firm but soft—it was neither a hillside nor his thick, hard palliasse, prickly with straw and spread over wooden chests. Nor was there any musty, sweet smell of hay rising with his every slight movement; and no fug of old sweat, old smoke and wet Cuddy. Instead—he wrinkled his nose—the smells were stinging and sharp.

And too much light. Even with the shutters open, there was not so much light in his bower, shadowed as it was with the tower walls and overhanging thatch.

He was half minded to hunch on his pillow and go to sleep again, but the
bip, bip, bip
and the too-bright light were insistent, and he opened his eyes.

The light dazzled him, and he squeezed his lids shut against it and lifted his arm to shade his face. Something fine tugged at his elbow.

Someone was in the light, blocking it. A voice that made him want to smile, even before he knew it, said, “It gladdens me to see thee.”

From behind the shade of his hand, he saw Andrea. The sight of her gladdened him. Her heavy, shining hair was slipping out of its pins and falling in thick tresses over her shoulder. The light, behind her, made a golden halo around her head, so she shone and dazzled. His Elf-May! Her face was all plump, smiling warm curves—like the body beneath, all plump, warm curves. He felt her take his other hand, where it lay on the bedding, and she stroked its back while holding it in her warm, soft clasp. It made him feel peaceful, like a cat in the sun. “All is right, Per; all is good.”

For sure it was; why should it not be? He opened his mouth to tell her she was beautiful, and like the Queen of Elf-Land herself, but found that even his face was weary. The arm he had raised to shade his eyes slumped back to the bed. He felt heavy and hazy, half numb and half asleep. He smiled at Andrea, and she pressed his hand between both of hers and smiled back—but her smile was wobbly. Tears spilled from her eyes.

“Oh Per, I'm so gladdened—to see some color in thy face again.”

He was surprised. Had he been sick then? Some memory, too quick to be caught, shifted in the back of his head. But seeing her in tears made him forget all that. Something was wrong, something was upsetting her, and he should put it right. His own eyes filled in sympathy. “What?” he said. His voice was a whispering croak. “What be matter?” Her tears pleased him too, giving him a little stab of pride that he couldn't help. It was said that Elves, like witches, couldn't cry, so she must care for him a great deal if tears could run down her face like this. Maybe it wouldn't be so easy for her to leave him without a look back, as the Seal-Mays and Swan-Mays did.

“Per? Canst understand me, lover? Thou must harken to me now.” She leaned further over him, so that she filled his sight. “I have to tell thee something …”

He raised a hand, trying to reach up to touch her hair, and she took both his hands and folded them together on his chest, holding them there. She said, “Careful of drips.” Drips? He thought of rain dripping from the eaves of thatch; droplets flying as Fowl shook his head after drinking; snot hanging in a drop on the end of a man's cold nose …

“Per?” She smiled. “Thou'rt not quite awake, art thou? Harken, love. Dost remember ride?”

His eyes kept slowly shutting, and slowly opening again. “Grannams,” he said.

“That's right. Night before Elf-Windsor came, remember? Tha led a ride after Grannams.”

“Gobby,” he said, on a sigh, as his eyes closed again.

“What? Doesn't matter. Per, dost remember being hurt?”

Memories moved in Per's mind, like fish in a deep pool, flashing into view and vanishing again. A big white moon in a dark sky over dark hills. A cold, damp wind and a smell of earth and grass. Great noise and yelling, and a dreadful, hot, sick ache …

“Thou wast hurt badly, Per, and lost blood, lots of blood. Thou all but died. Tha would have died.”

He blinked at her, feeling drowsily warm and comfortable, and having no clear memory of his life ever having been in danger. It was like being told about someone else. His head, when he tried to lift it, felt extraordinarily heavy, like a cannonball; so he pushed his chin up toward her, hoping she would take the hint and kiss him.

“Lie still and harken.”

“Entraya.”

“Hush. We saved thee. We, Elven—”

“Who's thy prick?” He pulled one hand out of hers, meaning to catch at a dangling strand of her hair.

“Per, thou'rt no harkening. I'm trying—”

One of his hands had fumbled up to her shoulder and her hair. “Be it me? Am I?”

She kissed him. “Ssh. Thou'rt my brave prick.” Another kiss. “And my bonny cockhorse. Now lie still, shut thy gob and harken. We saved thee from dying, Per. We put blood back into thee.”

“Aye,” he said. The Elves were famous for healing. “Thou gavest me espirin.”

“Nay, no aspirin, something stronger, Per. Harken. I have a big thing to tell thee. But thee mustn't be feared.”

“I'm no feared.”

“Nay, never be. Per, we brought thee into Elf-Land.”

He blinked at her again, slowly.

“If we'd left thee in Man's-Home, tha'd have died, lover, died. So we—I—I brought thee into Elf-Land. Thou'rt in Elf-Land. This is Elf-Land.”

She felt his whole body convulse under her. The drowsiness left his face. His head turned, trying to see past her.

“Per, Per.” She cupped his face in her hands, leaning close over him. “All's right, tha'rt safe. Nowt shall hurt thee, I swear.”

Per was staring up into her face and snatching at breath. Above and behind her head he could glimpse white walls and ceiling, shining with a harsh, wet gleam, like milk. The smooth, straight whiteness of the surfaces proved the truth of what she said. No such walls, no such ceilings were anywhere to be found in Man's-Home.

“All's right, Per. I brought thee here to make thee well. When thou'rt whole and healed, shalt go home again, I swear.”

Her hands still held his face, and he gripped her wrists with his own hands. Strange little pulses jumped in his elbows. What a fool to have trusted an Elf. What a fool to have trusted that, because there was love between them, she would do him no harm!

I set my back against an oak,

Thinking it a strong and trusty tree,

But first it bent, and then it broke,

And so did my true love to me.

Elves were, and had always been, uncertain and tricksy creatures, blessing with one hand, blighting with the other, as the mood took them. All the stories taught that an Elf's love was dangerous—you might be drawn away into Elf-Land to be a toy, or a slave, or mere coin to pay the tax that Elf-Land owed to Hel … But love blinded, deafened and tied the hands.

“Per, my own prick, be no feared.”

“I'm no feared.”

His eyes were straining sideways as he spoke, trying to see more of the room, and he looked so bewildered and so scared that she would have cried for him if she hadn't felt like laughing. She stroked his hair. “All's right. Would I do owt to hurt thee? Would I? Lots of folk have come into Elf-Land, thou'rt not the only one. Tam Lin came—”

Aye. Tam Lin had fallen asleep while out hunting and the Elf-Queen had found him, fancied him, and had taken him into Elf-Land. But the tax to Hel fell due, and the queen's love for him having cooled, Tam feared he would be part of the payment. Tam escaped, but barely, and the Elf-Queen cried after him:

“Tam Lin, Tam Lin, had I but known

That thou wouldst so betray me,

I would have cut out thy pretty gray eyes,

And put in two of tree.

“If this betrayal, Tam Lin, Tam Lin,

If this betrayal I'd known,

I would have cut out thy living heart,

And put in one of stone.”

“And True Thomas, he went into Elf-Land …”

True Thomas had spent seven years in Elf-Land, taken there by the Elf-Queen to be her lover—her silent lover, for she forbade him to speak. At the end of seven years, the tax to Hel fell due, and the queen loved Thomas well enough to send him back to Man's-Home, with the gift of second sight. His prophesy made him famous and rich, but also feared, and he was never again at peace in his own world, and lived only for the day when he was called back to Elf-Land …

“And there was—”

“Why hast brought me here?”

“I told thee, Per. To make thee well. Look—”

“I want to go home.”

“Thou shalt. Thou shalt, as soon as thy leg's healed. Lie still, keep still. Look, let me show thee—there's nowt to fear.”

With her fingers she was gently moving a black thread that seemed to be dangling from somewhere overhead. As she moved it, he felt something brush against his arm, and the odd little pulse jumped at his elbow again.

He looked up, following the black thread with his eyes, but was distracted by the pole that stood beside the bed, shining like polished silver in the sunlight. There were bars at the edge of the bed too, and they were silver. So much silver! Worth a fortune. The Elves were truly as rich as was said. But it would be hard to carry the silver away.

“Per.”

He looked up again and saw that at the top of the silver pole hung a—he didn't know what to call it. A soft bag that sagged with the weight of its contents, like a sheep's stomach filled with meal or water. But this bag was so thin that its contents could be seen through it. The great mass of the stuff was dark and thick, not quite black, but almost so. Some of it had smeared thinly and greasily over the inner surface of the bag, and here, where the light shone through it, the color was a dark red. It looked like blood. What was blood doing in a soft bag at the top of a silver pole above his bed?

The thin black thread was attached to the bag. It led down to his arm, to his elbow, where the pulse jumped. At the end of the thread was a little—he didn't know what it was, but it was sticking into his arm.
Into
his arm …

He gasped for breath and pushed himself up in the bed.

Andrea gripped his arms before he could snatch at the drips or jump out of bed. “All's right, never fear. I told thee, things are strange, but thou'rt safe.”

Now that he was sitting higher in the bed, he could see more of the room, and everything was uncanny …

“Per, Per, harken to me.”

A whole wall was missing. He looked out through the hole at green grass and treetops, from an angle that meant they must be high in a tower, and felt that the room was tilting and they would slide out. He gripped fiercely at Andrea's arm.

“Per, it be Elf-Work. What else wouldst find in Elf-Land but Elf-Work? It will no hurt thee; none of it will hurt thee.” He was breathing in snatches, his chest was rising and falling sharply, and he stared at her fixedly, his teeth gritted.

“Look.” She drew his attention again to the drip line. “This be how blood is put back into thee. See, it runs out of bag up there, and down this little pipe and into thine arm. It be making thee better, not hurting thee. And this one”—she showed him the drip line that led from the stand on his other side, from the bag of saline solution—“this one has Elf-Work in it to make thy leg heal faster.” The doctor had explained to her that it held one of the healing accelerants that had recently been approved for use. “And this”—she pointed to the electrode stuck to his chest—“this be Elf-Work to count thy heartbeats. Listen!” Raising a finger, she wagged it in time to the beeping of the machine. “The faster thy heart beats, the faster it beeps. Now calm down.” She stroked his arm. “Calm down, and it'll beep more slowly. Listen.”

He pushed himself up further until he was sitting. He still breathed fast, and his heart beat fast, but he didn't know what to do, or say, or where to look. “All's right,” Andrea kept saying, and her hand stroked on the bare skin of his arm, and her voice and touch held his fear in check—but she had brought him into Elf-Land …