Faerie Lord

Forty-Four

At the height of his popularity, Madame Cardui’s late husband, the Great Myphisto, accumulated enough gold to build himself a country retreat in the most fashionable sector of Wild moor Broads, tantalisingly close to the Nikure Barrens. True to his nature, he used no spells in its construction, yet the place was not at all what it seemed.

On the face of things, it appeared to be a small, charming manor house set in wooded grounds beside a running stream. But the woods were a stage set, a combination of cunningly painted forest backdrop fronted by stands of artificial trees. The brook, for all its babble, contained not a single drop of wrater. It was a mechanical contrivance constructed from shreds of metallic paper.

Nor did the whimsy stop there. Myphisto’s visitors reported that the imposing entrance door was painted on a blank wall. Should you look through any of the picture windows, you would see rooms that did not, in fact, exist. The ghost that haunted the manor’s long gallery was created by a calculating placement of sheet glass and mirrors. Certain guest chairs in the banquet hall wailed horribly when sat upon. There was a revolving staircase that led the unwary to a different floor each time it was used. There was a great bird, a masterpiece of papier mache, that swooped down from the rafters on hidden wires. The music room had a clockwork orchestra. There was a booth in the hallway containing the top half of a turbaned automaton that played chess.

From the air, the gardens were cunningly laid out to represent the grinning face of a circus clown, with clumps of dahlias as its eyes. ‘Are you going to land in the grounds?’ Blue asked a little anxiously.

‘Are you out of your mind?’ asked Pyrgus. ‘We’re going to have a hard enough time just walking through them.’

He brought the flyer down (with surprising skill) to one side of a lane way flanking the estate. They followed the wall until they reached the entrance gates.

‘Careful,’ Blue warned.

‘I’ll have to try it,’ Pyrgus told her. ‘His tricks cycle through a random sequence. Sometimes what you see is what you get.’ He pushed the gates, which sprang open at once.

‘Well, go on,’ Blue urged.

Pyrgus stepped through the gates and vanished. The gates themselves slammed shut. Blue waited. After a while, Pyrgus approached on the laneway, looking perplexed. ‘What happened?’ Blue asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Pyrgus frowned, ‘I think I was grabbed by mechanical arms and there may have been a trapdoor of some sort. It all happened very fast. How did it look to you?’

‘Like an invisibility spell, but without the shimmer.’

‘Well,’ said Pyrgus with no great enthusiasm, ‘the good news is I came out through a door in the wall we can use to get back in. I examined it carefully and it doesn’t seem to be gimmicked.’

He was right about the door, but when they entered the grounds they couldn’t find the house. At first they wandered through an artificial forest with paths that changed and changed again each time they retraced their steps. Then, when they solved the maze eventually, they emerged into an open space where the perspectives were all wrong. They could see the house all right, but it kept receding as they walked towards it. It took them almost fifteen minutes to realise they were actually walking towards a series of reflections. Even then, they might have wandered confused for another hour had not a uniformed butler emerged from the undergrowth and offered to show them the way.

‘Do you think I should tip him?’ Pyrgus asked Blue quietly.

Blue gave him a withering look. ‘Don’t be silly – he’s a machine. The Great Myphisto had dozens of them made.’

They found Madame Cardui poring over an enormous map scroll spread out across a dining table. She half turned as they entered. ‘Pyrgus deeah, just in -’ She stopped. ‘Ah.’ There was a long pause; then she said, ‘Your Majesty.’

‘Never mind my majesty, Madame Cynthia,’ Blue said, ‘I had your word you wouldn’t try to escape.’

‘Indeed you did, deeah, and I would break it again if I thought it would help the Realm.’ She looked across at Pyrgus. ‘Why did you bring your sister?’

‘Didn’t have much option,’ Pyrgus muttered.

Madame Cardui turned back to Blue. ‘My deeah, you have my apology, for what it’s worth. Can I assume Pyrgus has explained why we failed to involve you?’

Blue nodded, a little grimly. ‘He explained. I’m not sure I accept it.’ Or quite understand it, for that matter, but she decided not to complicate things.

‘Well, it is complex,’ Madame Cardui said sympathetically. ‘And perhaps we were wrong in what we did. Poor Alan didn’t see you in the future we are striving to bring about, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t there. In fact I’m sure you are. Nonetheless, we took what we thought to be the safest course. But it may not have been the correct course, or, indeed, the only course. In any case, we will soon know.’

Something in her voice alerted Blue at once. ‘Why do you say that, Madame Cardui?’

‘Alan saw this meeting, here in this room. It took place between Pyrgus and myself. You were not present. Now you are. The future has already been altered.’

‘Oh,’ Blue said. She glanced at Pyrgus, who was ostentatiously studying a mechanical canary in a golden cage, then looked back at Madame Cardui. ‘For the worse?’ she asked.

Madame Cardui said seriously, ‘That depends on why you did not show up in Alan’s visions.’ She smiled bleakly, ‘In any case, we shall soon find out.’ She turned back to the map. ‘Since you are here and the future has been changed, I see no reason to continue blocking your involvement. Frankly, I felt uncomfortable with what we were doing, but as I say, we believed it to be the safest course. I hope you will forgive us.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Blue said in a voice that gave away little. Then she stepped forward and her old assertiveness surfaced abruptly. ‘Even if the future really has changed, that doesn’t mean we have to forget about Mr Fogarty’s visions. Some of them may still be helpful.’

‘That had occurred to me,’ said Madame Cardui quietly.

‘Pyrgus says he doesn’t know where Henry is now,’ Blue said, ‘but you do – is that right?’

Madame Cardui nodded. ‘Yes. Alan told me.’ She pointed to a segment of the map.

Blue leaned forward. ‘Buthner?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘So you and Pyrgus planned to go to Buthner?’

‘Yes.’

‘With how many men?’

‘As an entourage? None.’

‘How did you expect to survive?’ Blue asked without irony or edge. ‘Buthner is one of the most dangerous regions in the world.’

Madame Cardui shrugged, ‘I was simply following Alan’s visions. In the successful future he foresaw, we went alone.’

‘So you think we should still go alone? Without support or guards?’

‘Yes.’ Madame Cardui turned towards her. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

‘No,’ Blue said without hesitation. ‘Not if it gets Henry – not if it helps save the Realm. Do we fly or go overland?’

Madame Cardui said, ‘We can’t fly directly into Buthner. The natives have no understanding of modern spell technology. They think flyers are giant birds that have swallowed the people inside them. Any passenger who disembarks is believed to be cursed and killed on sight. The typical Buthneri is a simple, primitive creature I’m afraid, and very, very vicious. However, the Realm has friendly relations with the Government of Hass-Verbim, which borders on Buthner to the north. We can fly there, then cross the border on foot.’

‘Do you know exactly where Henry is?’ Blue asked.

Madame Cardui shook her head. ‘No. We shall have to search for him.’

Blue said, ‘What is it, Madame Cynthia? What are you not telling me?’

Madame Cardui smiled. ‘How well you know me, deeah. Yes, there is something. At least there might be something. In the two futures that Alan foresaw – both the good and the bad – Henry was in Buthner. But your appearance here means we have now entered a third possible future, different from both the others.’ She sighed, ‘I’m afraid in this future there is no guarantee at all that Henry will be in Buthner.’

‘Or even still alive,’ Pyrgus put in helpfully.