Faerie Lord

Seventy-Seven

Henry turned to discover the voice belonged to Ino. The tattooed shaman looked awful. His eyes were still glazed and his legs were so rubbery that he had to be supported on either side by burly tribesmen. There were angry scratches on his torso as if he’d been attacked by a cat – heaven alone knew how he’d got those. The blue of his skin had taken on a greenish tinge, a particularly bilious combination that made him look like a standing corpse. But he grinned cheerfully at Henry, ‘I can call up your Charaxes,’ he said.

Henry glanced from Ino to Euphrosyne and back again. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I set the song-lines,’ Ino slurred almost inaudibly. His legs gave way again so he sank down in the grip of his companions.

Lorquin pushed himself to the front of the group now surrounding Henry. ‘Setting the song-lines is very difficult,’ he explained. ‘Only a clever man like Ino could manage it. Now he wishes to help you, En Ri. He knows you want to speak again to your Charaxes.’

‘Yes, but is he all right?’ Henry hissed. He drew Lorquin to one side and said quietly, ‘How can I ask him to help me – he looks ghastly.’

‘He always looks like that,’ Lorquin said, ‘It’s the tattoos.’

‘It’s not the tattoos,’ Henry insisted. ‘He looks as if he’s about to fall down.’

‘He always looks like that too,’ Lorquin said, ‘after setting the song-lines. But if you do not allow him to help you, how will you speak with your Charaxes before next year?’

‘Next year?’ Henry exploded. He lowered his voice hurriedly. ‘Euphrosyne said we could use the ark again soon.’

‘Next year will come sooner than you think,’ Lorquin assured him philosophically. ‘But if you wish to speak with your Charaxes before then, you must use Ino. It is not so clear as the ark, but better than no speech at all.’

‘But Ino is ill ’ Henry exclaimed. ‘He can hardly stand up. I mean, it’s nice of him and all that, but I can’t ask -’

‘You are not asking, En Ri,’ Lorquin said firmly. ‘He offers you a gift. Ino is a man as you and I are men, En Ri. You must permit him to act as men must act in friendship. You must trust him to judge his own strength.’

Henry stared at the child, wondering how somebody so young had managed to become so wise. He looked at Ino, who was swaying a bit, but now contrived to stand unaided. ‘Yes, all right,’ he said. Then quickly, ‘Thank you, Ino. Thank you very much.’

Despite Lorquin’s reassurances, it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t all up to Ino either. The entire tribe formed themselves into a circle again; three of the drummers pushed to the front and began to beat out a steady, complex rhythm. The sounds had an immediate affect on Ino, whose eyes rolled back in his head so only the whites were showing. Then he began to shuffle forwards and backwards in short, random movements. After a while he started to drool, then convulse. Henry watched him nervously. The shaman looked much like a B-movie zombie.

Henry’s nervousness increased when he tore his eyes away from Ino to glance around the assembled tribe. Many – face it, Henry, most – of them had rolled-back eyes now and were swaying in time with the rhythm as if they’d fallen into trance. Even Lorquin looked slack-jawed and dazed.

Several of the women began to dance again, but it was a wild, discordant dance that sometimes led to their colliding with one another. Several of the men burst into loud, erratic shouts. The whole scene had the feel of something that was gradually getting out of control and Henry didn’t like it. What he liked even less was the fact that the weird drum rhythm was getting to him as well. His eyes felt heavy and his mind kept getting soggy so that he had to jerk his attention savagely to stop himself falling asleep.

But then the drumming stopped. At once there was a shrill ululation from the women and Ino flung himself violently on the ground to begin spinning like a break-dancer. His eyes were glazed and dead, every limb spastic. Then he started to bang his head on the flagstones. To Henry’s horror, it made a crunching sound.

‘I say – ’ Henry put in nervously.

Ino responded to Henry’s voice as if he’d been stung. From flat on the ground he made an impossible leap high in the air to land in a squatting position. He gave a gut-wrenching scream.

‘Charaxes!’ chanted the tribe at once. ‘Charaxes! Charaxes! Charaxes!’

From his squatting position, Ino glared up at Henry like an angry dog. The resemblance was so striking that for a moment Henry thought he might actually attack; then his eyes closed, his face went entirely passive and his lips began to move. The tribe stopped its chant at once.

Henry pushed aside his fear and squatted beside Ino. The shaman’s mumbling sounded like a two-way conversation heard through a thick door, but Henry could not make out a single word. ‘What?’ Henry asked. ‘What are you saying?’

Then Lorquin was by Henry’s side. ‘Don’t speak, En Ri,’ he said quietly, ‘I no talks with your Charaxes.’

Henry waited. Ino turned to him abruptly, ‘I see him,’ he said.

‘See who?’ Henry asked foolishly.

‘I see your Charaxes. He wishes you to say why you did not do as he instructed you.’

Henry looked at the shaman blankly.

The shaman stared into his eyes, blinked twice and said, ‘He has taken my filament.’ The voice he used was a woman’s voice and Henry recognised it at once.

Henry went cold. ‘Blue…?’ he whispered. His stomach knotted. Was Blue already dead?

‘I can’t find my way back,’ Ino said.

‘Blue? Blue, where are you?’

‘In the dark,’ said Ino clearly. The voice was sounding more like Blue each second.

‘What filament?’ Henry asked. ‘Who has taken it?’

‘The clown,’ Blue said. ‘He took it.’

It was making no sense at all. But the voice was Blue’s voice: he was certain of that. Somehow he was talking to Blue through the mouth of the Luchti shaman. ‘What clown?’ Then, more urgently, ‘Where are you, Blue?’

‘The serpent will get me,’ Blue said. She sounded dreamy, as if she was half asleep.

This was getting worse and worse. Henry felt like taking Ino and shaking him, except that one look at Ino’s face was enough to show the shaman was no longer there. His eyes, which had looked blind before, now seemed fathomless and empty. He had sunk down from his squatting position so that now he was seated on the ground, every muscle relaxed like a rag doll. With a massive effort Henry forced himself to be calm. ‘You’re being attacked by a serpent?’ If she was being attacked by a serpent, there was nothing he could do, nothing at all. Even if miraculously she was only half a mile away, he could not get to her in time to save her.

‘Soon,’ Blue said in her dreamy voice. ‘The Trickster took my filament.’

Since clowns and serpents and filaments made no sense, Henry concentrated on the one thing that might. ‘Where are you, Blue. You have to tell me where you are.’

‘In the dark,’ Blue repeated; to Henry’s horror her voice seemed to be fading.

‘In the dark where?’ he asked desperately. ‘Are you in the Palace? Are you in the city? Blue, where are you?’

Blue said something, but so faintly now that Henry couldn’t catch it.

In a mounting panic he reached out to grip Ino’s arm. ‘Where are you, Blue?’ he shouted. ‘Please, darling, tell me where you are!’

‘She’s in the Mountains of Madness,’ Ino said crossly in Mr Fogarty’s voice. ‘And don’t call me "darling".’