Faerie Lord

Fifty-Two

‘Is that the tomb?’ Lorquin asked.

The sun was low on the horizon so that the ruin cast a long, distorted shadow on the sand. But it was definitely the tomb. How Lorquin had found it on the basis of Henry’s vague description was a mystery bordering on a miracle.

‘Yes,’ Henry said tightly. He was frankly afraid. He could walk now, though his leg still pained him considerably, and his arm seemed to have healed very well, but the thought of facing the vaettir again filled him with dread. He was vaguely aware of another root to his fear. It was obvious he could not survive in the desert without Lorquin. The boy had not only rescued him and saved his leg, but it was Lorquin who found food for them in this wilderness. It was Lorquin who produced water. It was Lorquin who knew his way about although there was not a single landmark obvious to Henry. If Lorquin disappeared now. Henry imagined he might live for a day or two if he was lucky, after which he would face a particularly unpleasant death. And while Lorquin showed no signs whatsoever of abandoning him, it was a nerve-wracking feeling to be so utterly dependant on a child. Henry hesitated. ‘What do we do now?’

‘We wait,’ Lorquin said.

After a moment Henry asked, ‘What are we waiting for?’

‘For the sun to go down. The vaettir will come out when it’s dark.’

It was exactly what Henry had suspected when he crawled away from his first encounter. The vaettir was a creature of the night. ‘What do we do then?’

‘We follow it,’ Lorquin said. ‘With small luck it will lead us to the draugr.’

This was what Henry didn’t really want to think about. His memory of the vaettir was terrifying. He couldn’t begin to imagine what a draugr might be like. ‘Look here, Lorquin,’ he ventured uneasily, ‘about this draugr…’

Lorquin said firmly, ‘We must lie down, En Ri, and bury ourselves in the sand.’

It stopped Henry short. ‘What? Why?’

‘So that the vaettir does not smell us as it leaves the tomb. It will emerge into the half-light and that is when it is most careful. If it knows we are here, it will attack and we must kill it and then it will not lead us to the draugr.’

‘What happens if it kills us?’

Lorquin looked at him blankly, ‘It still will not lead us to the draugr,’ he said.

It was another world, really. Lorquin didn’t even think the way he did. Adjusting to the Faerie Realm was hard enough sometimes, but adjusting to a blue boy who somehow survived in the desert was just about impossible. Lorquin was already lying face down, carefully pulling sand over himself with sweeping movements of his arms. In a moment, only part of his head was visible, his eyes watchful. After a moment, Henry lay down beside him and did the same. They lay together, side by side, staring at the deepening silhouette of the tomb.

‘Look here, Lorquin,’ Henry said again, returning to his earlier concern, ‘I may not be much good to you if – when – when we catch up with this draugr thing. I mean, where I come from, we don’t go in for fighting… creatures much or rites of passage or that sort of thing.’

‘Then how did you become a man, En Ri, when your body grew hair and you ceased to have an interest in the matters of childhood?’

‘I started listening to pop music,’ Henry said. And thinking about girls a lot, his mind added irreverently. Somehow it sounded silly when compared with going out to kill a lion or a draugr. He hesitated, staring at the dying sun. ‘Anyway,’ he hurried on, ‘the point is, I’m not experienced in any of this draugr stuff, which means I’m not much of a Companion, so it may be better if you just forget about… well, about the whole thing, and go back to your people and maybe, if you were feeling really nice about it, you could get somebody to show me the way out of the desert.’ And I could go home, he thought, although he wasn’t quite sure where he meant by home or how to get there even if he escaped the desert.

‘But how then would I become a man?’ Lorquin asked. His eyes, peering out above the sand like a crocodile in water, were wide with bewilderment.

‘Isn’t there some other way?’ Henry asked desperately. He racked his mind for everything he’d ever read about primitive communities. ‘A vision quest or something?’ Something safe. Something that didn’t involve killing… killing… ‘What exactly is a draugr anyway?’ he asked.

But Lorquin’s wide eyes were no longer looking in his direction. ‘We must be silent now, En Ri,’ he whispered.

Henry followed his gaze and discovered the pale thing Lorquin called a vaettir had emerged from its tomb.