Faerie Lord

Sixty-Four

Madame Cardui had never been to the Analogue World before and it took her less than half an hour to decide she didn’t like it.

The worst of it was the utterly hideous clothing she was forced to wear. No sense of style, or cut, or colour whatsoever. And naturally no woven spells. So everything just hung on one’s body with all the panache of splattered porridge.

‘What are those?’ she asked coldly when Nymph produced a particularly repulsive garment.

‘Trousers,’ Nymph said briefly.

The girl was worried about Pyrgus. They were both worried about Pyrgus. But all the same… ‘Men’s garments?’ Madame Cardui asked her. ‘You expect me to indulge in cross-dressing?’

Nymph shook her head. ‘No, no, Madame Cardui. These are not men’s garments. These are part of a woman’s suit. Trousers and a jacket. Muted colours, darker shades. These sort of clothes are very popular in the Analogue World.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘Particularly for the older woman.’

Madame Cardui glared at her. ‘Then I shall certainly not wear them.’

She settled eventually on a heavily frilled blouse, open at the neck and worn with an ankle-length gypsy skirt and open sandals. As an afterthought she added a silk scarf for extra colour. It was a far cry from what she was used to, but at least it showed a little flair. Nymph looked at her uncertainly. ‘No arguments,’ said Madame Cardui coldly. One had to keep up standards, even in the Analogue World.

Translation, as it turned out, was rather fun. She would have liked to use one of Alan’s portable transporters just as a small remembrance – but he had made so very few of them before he died and all had eventually begun to exhibit that unfortunate fault which turned people inside out. So she stepped with Nymph into the cold blue flames of the official Palace portal. Which produced a sensation similar to stepping off a cliff, something which, curiously, she found enjoyable.

But enjoyable was not an adjective one would readily use to describe the Analogue World, she discovered. For their stay in this ridiculous dimension, Pyrgus and Nymph had rented a small country estate suited, if only just, to the status of a Faerie Prince and his consort. But the place, it transpired, was built on granite with such a high quartz content that portal technology would not work in the immediate vicinity. The young people took the inconvenience in their stride, of course, and Nymph had arranged transportation from the actual (and thankfully well-concealed) portal outlet.

Madame Cardui stared at the carriage, aghast. ‘What is that?’

‘It’s called a motor car,’ Nymph said.

‘Why is it such a peculiar shape?’

‘They make them that way,’ Nymph said vaguely. She walked across to open the door.

Madame Cardui peered inside suspiciously, ‘I thought they used horses to draw their carriages?’

Nymph shook her head. ‘That was a long time ago.’

Madame Cardui straightened up, frowning. ‘So they use spell technology now?’

Nymph shook her head again. She smiled slightly. ‘Most humans don’t even believe in magic any more you know the problems Henry’s had with it.’

‘So how does it work?’ Madame Cardui asked, ‘I assume it does work?’

‘There is a mechanical engine,’ Nymph said. ‘Concealed in that bulge on the front.’

‘Good grief – is it safe?’

‘Not very,’ Nymph admitted, ‘but we haven’t far to go.’ She climbed into the extraordinary contraption and signed for Madame Cardui to join her.

‘Where is our driver?’ Madame Cardui asked as she did so.

‘I shall drive,’ Nymph said.

‘You, deeah?’

‘Pyrgus taught me,’ Nymph said, smiling proudly. ‘He’s quite good at it.’ She leaned forward and unlocked something in one wall of the carriage. The entire structure shook and growled like a demented cat.

‘Does it always make that noise?’ asked Madame Cardui.

Far to go or not, the journey was frankly sordid. The carriage didn’t fly, wouldn’t even hover, so that it jerked and rattled and hummed and growled on primitive wheels (wheels!) along trackways that were filled – positively filled – with similar repulsive vehicles. Everything was smell and confusion and noise and poor Nymphalis had to steer the thing herself. Not even an elemental to lighten the load.

Matters improved somewhat as they neared Pyrgus and Nymph’s Analogue home, mainly because it was some distance from any major centre of population and consequently there were far fewer – what was it Nymph called them? – motor cars about. But that did not make the Analogue World any more appealing. The sky was the wrong shade of blue, where it showed blue at all. The clouds were generally of an irritatingly different shape to Realm clouds. Even sunshine wasn’t right. It had a curious whiteness about it, not at all as pleasant as the rich gold of faerie sunshine.

Eventually Nymph manoeuvred their carriage off the public trackways altogether and through a set of tall, imposing gates. Madame Cardui shivered. ‘Those aren’t iron, are they?’ she asked.

‘Yes, they are,’ Nymph said.

‘But, my deeah, don’t you realise how dangerous iron can be?’ It occurred to her that Pyrgus’s mysterious ‘Analogue illness’ might easily have started from a brush with iron. The metal was quite lethal to a faerie.

‘They use a lot of it here,’ Nymph said offhandedly, ‘It doesn’t seem to have quite so strong an effect as it does at home.’ She caught Madame Cardui’s expression and added quickly, ‘We take great care, of course. There is very little iron in the house itself.’

Very little? The child said Very little? In any sensible faerie household there would be none at all. For Madame Cardui, even the fashionable protected iron, with its vaunted safety guarantees, held no appeal.

The house, on the whole, was less disappointing. It was small for a prince, but looked mature and the architecture was actually quite interesting. She recalled having read somewhere that there was a slight gravitational difference between the Analogue and Faerie Worlds: not enough to be noticeable, but enough to affect building materials under stress, hence architectural styles. It wasn’t the only difference she noticed.

‘Where are the servants?’ she asked Nymph sharply as the ghastly vehicle pulled up at the front of the house. They should have been lined up at the doorway, ready to greet their mistress. She did so hope Nymph was not letting standards slip.

‘We don’t have any,’ Nymph said as she locked whatever it was in the carriage she had unlocked and removed the key.

Madame Cardui blinked. ‘Don’t be ridiculous – of course you have servants.’

‘We have a cook, because I’m not much good at that and Pyrgus doesn’t know how to find his way to the kitchen. And there’s a nurse looking after him while I’m away. But we don’t have servants the way you mean. They’re actually quite difficult to find here, even when you offer gold.’

Madame Cardui climbed out of the carriage shaking her head. She could see she would have to do something about the way Pyrgus and Nymph were living if they were forced to stay in the Analogue World very much longer. Pyrgus was a man, of course, so one expected him to be clueless. Nymph should have known better, but she was a Forest Faerie and that was a wholly different culture. She shouldered her reticule of healing spells. When she removed his present illness, she would make time to organise their household properly. Even with a crisis at home, there were some things that had to take priority. Besides which, it wouldn’t take long.

The nurse proved far too familiar when addressing her betters, but at least she seemed genuinely concerned about Pyrgus’s condition, even to the point of insisting that he required to be treated urgently by an Analogue doctor.

‘I am a doctor,’ Madame Cardui told her grandly. Which was, of course, true since her healing spells were likely to be far more effective than any Analogue leech-craft.

The woman had the effrontery to glance at Madame Cardui’s sandals, but backed off under an icy stare, leaving them free at last to proceed unhindered to poor Pyrgus’s bedroom.

But as they stepped through the doorway, Madame Cardui went chill. One look at the figure in the bed told her everything she needed to know. She dropped the reticule of useless spells. ‘This isn’t an Analogue illness,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s temporal fever.’

Nymph stared at her in disbelief. ‘You can’t have temporal fever in the Analogue World,’ she said.

‘That’s what we all thought,’ Madame Cardui said soberly. ‘But clearly we were wrong.’