The Faeman Quest

Forty-Five

The creature, on four legs, stood higher than Mella’s shoulder while she was standing on two. It was far and away the most terrifying thing she’d ever seen. Its body was that of a giant lion, tawny and heavily muscled with great clawed feet. It might even have been a giant lion, but for two things. The first was that its rear end was nothing like the hindquarters of a lion. Instead, it tapered and curled upwards into a vicious scorpion sting the size of an ogre’s spear. The second – and Mella really couldn’t get her mind around this one – was that in place of a lion’s mane and jaw was the broad, reddish-brown head of a man. Or perhaps not quite a man, for the nose was flat, the teeth immense and the tongue lolled from the mouth like the tongue of a dog.

‘Oh my Gods!’ whispered Mella II.

Mella took a small step backwards. Instinctively, she kept herself between the creature and her newfound sister. Not that she could be any real protection. A single leap and the thing would be upon them. A single slash of one paw and they’d be dead.

‘What is it?’ gasped Mella II.

‘It’s what you’ve just been talking about,’ Mella told her quietly. ‘That’s a manticore. Haven’t you ever seen one before?’

Mella II was staring at the thing with eyes like saucers. She shook her head. ‘No. Have you?’

‘No, but I’ve seen pictures.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘I never thought they were so big.’

‘Do you think we should run?’ Mella II asked her.

Mella had been wondering the same thing herself. The truth was, she didn’t know a lot about manticores, despite seeing pictures and reading a bit about them. Some wild animals chased you if you ran, and killed you when they caught up. Some ate you if you stood still. The trick seemed to be figuring out which was which, and nothing she’d read ever seemed to give a hint how. Besides, she wasn’t sure she should think of a manticore as a wild animal. Didn’t magical creatures fall into a different category? She wasn’t sure, but she did know they were unpredictable. But the bottom line was that this magical creature wasn’t growling like a lion, wasn’t pawing the ground like a bull, didn’t have its ears flattened like a cat or its lips curled back in a snarl like a wolf. In short, it was making no threating gestures. It wasn’t moving at all, in fact: not stalking them, or chasing them or creeping up on them or anything.

She wondered who’d spoken. Maybe they weren’t facing a wild manticore. Maybe this manticore had a keeper. After all, if Lord Hairstreak planned to use them as an army, there must be some way of training them.

‘Best not to startle it,’ she told Mella II.

She looked around for the animal’s keeper. ‘Hello…’ she called, but quietly so as not to startle the beast. ‘Can you come out and show yourself?’

‘Who are you talking to?’ asked Mella II. Despite her previous question she didn’t look ready to run.

The manticore rolled its tongue back into its fearsome mouth. ‘My guess is she thinks she’s talking to my keeper,’ it said, a little thickly.

Mella felt as if a claw had clutched her heart. ‘Manticores can talk?’ There was nothing about that in the literature.

The manticore shook his head so that leaves rustled in his mane. ‘Just this one. I have a special dispensation and a bit of extra magic from our leader.’

Who was their leader and how could he get a manticore to talk? But before Mella could ask, Mella II said, ‘We don’t mean you any harm.’

The manticore stretched: he was actually bigger than both the girls put together. He raised one paw and extended claws that looked like sabres. He grinned slightly, showing fangs that would have done justice to a shark. ‘I was a bit worried about that,’ he said.

A manticore with a sense of humour! The creature could swallow their whole heads with a single gulp, but somehow Mella started to feel at ease. ‘Did you say you could help us?’ she ventured.

‘If you’d like to come with me…’ the manticore told her. ‘My name is -’ It was even thicker than his usual speech, but sounded something like Aboventoun, ‘- by the way.’

Mella glanced at Mella II. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to the manticore. The two girls clumped together for a hurried conference.

‘He wants us to go with him.’

‘Yes, I heard.’

‘What do you think?’

Mella II stretched around Mella to look at the manticore. ‘He’s terribly big.’

‘Yes, isn’t he? I don’t suppose you know what they eat?’

‘You mean, like, people?’

‘We’re vegetarian,’ the manticore said helpfully.

‘This is a private conversation,’ Mella told him firmly. ‘Please don’t listen in.’

But Mella II said to him directly, ‘You’re vegetarian with those teeth?’

‘They’re for fighting, not eating,’ said the manticore. ‘My ancestors didn’t evolve: they were created. ’

Mella II placed her mouth close to Mella’s ear and whispered, ‘What if he’s one of Hairstreak’s manticores?’

Mella had been trying not to think about Lord Hairstreak, who was presumably tracking them by now. She looked at Aboventoun, who looked back at her blandly. ‘Why do you want us to go with you?’ she asked bravely.

‘Well, not to eat you, that’s for sure. Our leader wants to meet you.’

The girls looked at one another, then back at the manticore. ‘How did your leader know we were here?’ they asked in unison.

‘Our leader knows everything. ’

Mella had the uncomfortable feeling that leaders who knew everything were usually megalomaniacs. This manticore seemed friendly, but he still looked deadly dangerous. Did she really want to meet another one?

Suddenly, without the slightest warning, she realised that she did. She trusted the manticore and she knew exactly why. The creature was a mixture. Haleklind wizards had taken bits of lion, bits or scorpion, bits of man and bits of heaven knew what else (those teeth!) to make its first ancestor. For the wizards, the result was a war machine. For the creature itself, the result simply had to be confusion. It was an extraordinary mixture, a prey to strange thoughts, and perplexing emotions. Mella knew this because she was a mixture herself, human and faerie. She and the manticore were two of a kind.

She turned to Mella II. ‘I vote we go with him,’ she said.

‘So do I,’ said Mella II without the slightest hesitation.

They were deeper in the forest than they thought and reaching the manticore’s companions – he called them his herd – took longer than Mella had anticipated. By the time they emerged from the trees, her feet were sore and she was exhausted and breathless from trying to keep pace with a creature who tried to move at her pace, but whose long legs covered an enormous amount of ground even at an amble. She stood stock still, wondering if she had made the right decision. Mella II stepped out of the forest to join her. Together they stared out across the open plain.

‘Oh my Gods!’ Mella whispered.

It was a spectacle drawn directly from a madman’s dream. The entire plain was black with manticores – hundreds, perhaps even thousands, stretching as far as the eye could see. They were grazing as the girls emerged, but now, like a vast wave on a giant ocean, heads came up and turned to look towards them. The eyes of the beasts glowed in the sunlight.

‘Which one’s the leader?’ Mella II murmured.

‘I’ll take you to him,’ said their guide. ‘Just follow me.’ Aboventoun strode forward and the edge of the herd parted to allow him through.

‘I’m not going in there,’ Mella said decisively. Following a single manticore was scary enough, but walking into a herd of thousands took courage of a whole different kind.

‘We have to,’ Mella II told her.

‘Why? Why do we have to?’ Aboventoun might be able to talk (by special dispensation) but these were wild beasts, dangerous and unpredictable.

‘Because we don’t know what else to do,’ Mella II said firmly (as firmly as Mella herself might have said if she had anything to be firm about). ‘We have to get to the Palace and we don’t know how and Aboventoun is the only creature who’s volunteered to help us.’ She glanced at the waiting Aboventoun. ‘Sorry to call you a “creature”,’ she added.

‘That’s all right,’ said Aboventoun. ‘It’s exactly what I am. Now, are you coming before our leader gets impatient?’

Mella hesitated a second longer, then moved forward with her sister. Mella II was right: they simply didn’t know what else to do.

The herd opened a pathway to allow them through. Aboventoun ambled along it without looking back. The smell of the great beasts enveloped them. It was by no means unpleasant and after a few paces became actively comforting, as if they too had become part of a protective herd. A few of the creatures stretched out their heads to sniff them as they walked past. None showed any sign of aggression.

With the manticores all around them, they could see nothing but Aboventoun’s great swinging scorpion tail. Mella was beginning to wonder how long it was going to take to meet the leader when, without warning, the manticores scattered, leaving a large circular open space in the middle of which stood…

Aboventoun lowered his head, then slowly, carefully, bent his forelegs. Mella wondered what on earth he was trying to do, then realised he was kneeling. She stared, open-mouthed, at the thing he was kneeling to.

If she’d thought about it at all, Mella must have assumed that the leader of the manticores would be a manticore himself. Or possibly herself. But she should perhaps have thought to ask herself how one dumb beast, however dominant, could persuade another of its kind to talk. What she was looking at was big and strong and fierce all right, but it was no manticore. It was huge and fanged and humanoid and feathered, with fiery saucer eyes and strangler’s hands. It rose to tower above her as it towered above Aboventoun and every other nearby creature. She could see it, she could smell it – it had a heavy spice scent – yet in some peculiar way it did not seem to be really there at all.

It sniffed her scent through twitching nostrils, then smiled a smile of recognition. ‘I knew your mother once,’ it told her in a voice that reverberated through her head.

Mella opened her mouth then closed it again. It seemed impossible for her to speak. If the manticores were frightening, this thing was positively terrifying. I knew your mother once? Mella tried again to speak and failed.

‘I am Yidam,’ said the creature. ‘But thou may call me George.’