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.
Forty-Five
Henry’s leg still wouldn’t support his weight and it hurt worse than at any time since the vaettir bit him. But it was a clean pain and the swelling was way down and what came out when Lorquin squeezed the wound was good red blood, not the yellow-green slime that had oozed earlier.
Lorquin had built him a crude shelter using branches of deadwood – where had he found them? – and the batwing thing that had covered Henry when he was cold in the night. Lorquin had also given him water, a little more of the tart juice and fed him something white and bloated that Henry didn’t care to examine too closely. It tasted of roast garlic and satisfied his hunger remarkably well.
‘Lorquin…?’
‘Yes, En Ri?’
‘Your… ah… colour. Is it natural?’
Lorquin looked at him blankly.
‘The blue colour,’ Henry said, half wishing he hadn’t started this, ‘Is it, like, your own skin colour, or do you use, you know, dye and stuff?’
‘I am Luchti.’ Lorquin shrugged, as if that explained something.
‘Luchti’s your tribe – right?’
‘My people,’ Lorquin said.
‘Where are they?’ Henry asked.
Lorquin made a vague gesture towards the distant horizon. He looked impatient with the whole conversation. Or possibly just puzzled.
Henry licked his lips. ‘How is it you’re alone in the desert? You are alone, aren’t you?’
Lorquin nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Why is that?’ Henry asked, ‘I mean, why aren’t you with your people?’
‘I seek the draugr,’ Lorquin said. To Henry’s surprise he smiled suddenly and broadly, ‘I find you.’
Henry wondered what a draugr was, but thought he might come back to that in a minute. He had a shrewd suspicion what might be going on here. ‘You’re about to become a man, aren’t you?’
Lorquin stuck his narrow chest out proudly. ‘Yes.’
Bingo, Henry thought. He’d read about this sort of thing somewhere, or possibly watched a documentary on television. Lots of primitive tribes had puberty rites for young boys. They marked the transition from childhood to manhood. You were turned loose to fend for yourself in the bush or the jungle or the desert, and if you survived the ordeal, you became a man. Sometimes it got really heavy. Young Masai or Zulu or somebody had to go and kill a lion before they were allowed back in the tribe. He hoped Lorquin’s draugr wasn’t something like that, but there was a chance it might be. He opened his mouth to ask, but Lorquin beat him to it.
‘Finding you was a good omen, En Ri,’ Lorquin said.
‘Why’s that?’ Henry asked.
‘When the Companion stands, we know the vaettir lives,’ Lorquin said incomprehensibly.
For some reason it stopped Henry dead. ‘Lorquin,’ he said. ‘The draugr thing is something you have to find in order to become a man? Like a treasure? Some rare plant? Something your tribe values very highly?’ Even as he asked, he knew what the answer would be, but he really, really didn’t want the situation to unfold the way he thought it was going to.
Lorquin grinned at him. ‘The draugr is something we have to kill, En Ri.’
The word we flashed neon lights. ‘We?’ Henry echoed. ‘You mean you and me?’
‘You are the Companion spoken of in the Holy Sagas,’ Lorquin said benignly.
‘Actually I’m not -’
‘And as Companion you will help me find the draugr, just as the songs say.’ ‘Lorquin, I don’t know anything about your songs. Or draugrs. I don’t know what they are. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how to get out of this desert. I don’t even know what country I’m in. I can’t -’