‘What’s the matter with him?’ Blue whispered.
‘We think a cloud dancer may have got to him,’ said the Abbot.
Fifty-Nine
‘You located him?’ Hairstreak asked the cloud dancer.
‘Yes.’
‘You reached him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where was he?’
‘Near the Mountains of Madness.’
Hairstreak frowned. He’d never heard of the Mountains of Madness. ‘Where’s that?’
‘The Kingdom of Buthner.’
Buthner? That godsforsaken hole? What did Brimstone think he was doing in Buthner? Then, like a thunderbolt, an answer occurred to him. Hiding something. Brimstone had to be hiding something. Except it couldn’t be the one thing that interested Hairstreak, he’d never have managed to smuggle that out of the country. So it had to be something else. Unless he wasn’t hiding something. Unless he’d gone to Buthner for something. Hairstreak felt his mind go into a whirl of indecision. This was why he’d hired the cloud dancer, dammit. ‘What was he doing there?’ he demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ the cloud dancer said.
Hairstreak glared at it. ‘You don’t know?’ he repeated. ‘Didn’t you bother to ask him?’
The cloud dancer said, ‘Yes.’
When it became obvious the creature wasn’t going to elaborate, Hairstreak said, ‘And…?’
‘He refused to tell me.’
‘Of course he refused to tell you!’ Lord Hairstreak exploded. ‘What did you expect? If the old goat was prepared to tell people. I’d have asked him myself. That was the whole point of hiring you, you insubstantial cretin. So you could force it out of him. Didn’t you try to force it out of him?’
The cloud dancer said, ‘Yes.’
When it became obvious for the second time the creature wasn’t going to elaborate, Hairstreak repeated, ‘And…?’
‘I think I may have overdone it.’
This was turning into a minuet. Hairstreak controlled his fury with an effort. ‘Why do you think you may have overdone it?’
‘Because he is now insane.’
‘You sent him mad?’ Hairstreak screamed. ‘So he can no longer answer questions?’
The cloud dancer said, ‘Yes.’
Hairstreak thumped the table with such force that the surface cracked. ‘And what are you going to do about it?’ he demanded.
A portion of the cloud dancer’s arm disappeared as it reached into its own dimension, then reappeared with a wide-necked jug, which it placed on the table before Hairstreak. Then it pushed two fingers down its throat, retched violently and vomited a quantity of curdled blood into the jug.
It stared triumphantly at Hairstreak. ‘Return your fee,’ it said.
Sixty
‘Where did you find him?’ Blue asked. Thankfully, they’d left the former dungeons and were now sitting together in the garden, shaded from the merciless sun by an enormous spreading tree of a type she’d never seen before.
‘Wandering in the desert,’ the Abbot said. ‘One of our monks happened on him, otherwise he would have been dead within a few hours. As it was, he was nearly dead.’
‘And was he in that state – ’ even talking about Brimstone, she shied from using the word mad ‘- when you found him? I mean, was he – ?’
The Abbot nodded. ‘Yes. He is very old. We thought he might die. We tended to his body – we have healers in the monastery – and he recovered. But we could do nothing for his mind.’
‘Forgive me,’ the Purlisa put in. He was seated beside her on the bench and she noticed his sandaled feet didn’t quite reach the ground. ‘But you know who he is?’
‘He is one of my subjects,’ Blue said. ‘His name is Silas Brimstone. He is a Faerie of the Night who once ran a manufacturing business in the capital.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘He is not a good man.’
‘That would accord with my visions,’ said the Purlisa.
There was something about him that made her feel they had been friends throughout her entire life. Blue said quietly, ‘I think you’d better tell me about your visions.’
‘Since I was little,’ the Purlisa said (and Blue somehow refrained from smiling), ‘there have been times when God granted me revelations of certain matters past and present, sometimes, although not often, future. I fear what you say is correct. This Silas Brimstone is not a good man. He has raised the Midgard Serpent.’
Blue looked at him blankly. ‘What’s the Midgard Serpent?’
‘This is where it gets hard to believe,’ the Abbot muttered.
The Purlisa glanced at him crossly, then turned back to smile at Blue. ‘Do you know of the Old Gods, Queen Blue?’
‘Oh yes,’ Blue said without elaboration. It wasn’t so long ago since she’d been face to face with one of the Old Gods herself.
‘Before the dawn of our history, one of them – his name was Loki – married a giant and fathered three children by her. The middle one was a sea serpent -’
The Abbot snorted derisively.
‘It’s a whole other reality!’ the Purlisa snapped. ‘I’ve told you that before, Jamides.’
‘You’ve told me, but I don’t believe you.’
‘Please don’t quarrel,’ Blue said, ‘I ‘d really like to hear this story.’
‘Yes, stop quarrelling, Jamides.’
‘I wasn’t quarrelling.’
‘Well, stop snorting then.’ The Purlisa turned back to Blue, ‘I don’t suppose for a minute it was a natural birth. The father was very tricky and may have used magic to transform the poor little mite. But in any case the Emperor of the Old Gods got to hear about the business and decided that the birth was an abomination -’
‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’ put in the Abbot.
The Purlisa ignored him. ’ – and threw the serpent into the great ocean that encircles Midgard.’
‘Where luckily it discovered it was a sea serpent,’ the Abbot said, casting his eyes heavenwards.
‘Where it began to grow and grow until it was so large it was able to surround the whole of Midgard.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Blue. ‘You saw all this in a vision?’
The Purlisa shook his head. ‘No, no, I saw none of this in a vision. It’s recorded in the Annals of the Old Gods.’
‘Which some of us don’t take literally,’ the Abbot said.
The Purlisa closed his eyes. ‘Which Jamides is too modern to take literally.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘But we won’t worry too much what Jamides thinks, will we, Queen Blue?’ While Blue was searching for a diplomatic response, he went on. ‘The creature began to squeeze the boundaries of Midgard, causing earthquakes and tidal waves and hurricanes and the like, and eventually it became obvious that if something wasn’t done the whole of Midgard would be destroyed. All life would be wiped out.’ He shivered. ‘Dreadful thought. So the Emperor appointed a series of heroes to tackle the problem. The serpent ate most of them, but one discovered the only effective weapon against it was a hammer – swords or projectiles or anything of that sort simply wouldn’t work. So he used his war hammer and the serpent shrank to manageable proportions. It ceased to give trouble and things settled down in Midgard for several thousand years.’
‘Where exactly is Midgard, Purlisa?’ Blue asked.
‘It’s our present reality,’ the Purlisa said. ‘The whole of the Faerie Realm and the Analogue World – all of it. It takes in Hael as well, I believe. It’s all the dimensions of reality we can experience.’
‘Oh,’ Blue said.
‘Now the Purlisa thinks the trouble will be starting up again.’ The Abbot smiled.
‘I know it will be starting up again,’ the Purlisa said soberly. ‘Your friend Brimstone -’
‘No friend of mine,’ Blue murmured.
‘- has called up the Serpent. Called it into our reality: into Midgard, that is. I saw it clearly in my vision. This will start the cycle again. The beast can only grow and grow. Unless we find a hero to stop it, our reality will eventually be destroyed.’