“I’m here about the USS Eldridge,” I said. “An American naval vessel that found its way here in 1943. You weren’t on the Ivory Throne at the time, Your Majesty, but I’ll bet the Herald was around back then. I need to know what happened to this ship; how it was able to come here and what happened to it while it was here.”
Queen Mab turned her great head slowly to look at the Herald, who bowed low in return.
“I do indeed remember the occasion, Your Majesty. Would it please you to have me tell of it?”
“Show them,” said Queen Mab.
The Herald clenched his left hand into a fist. Razor-sharp thorns burst out the back of his hand. Golden blood splashed onto the floor before him, quickly spreading out to form a golden scrying pool. And in that pool appeared images from the past, showing all that had befallen the unfortunate USS Eldridge.
“Your world was at war,” whispered the Herald, his golden eyes fixed on the images forming in the scrying pool. “Its very boundaries weakened by the sheer extent of the savagery and slaughter. So when one of your ships came knocking at our door, we were tempted and let it in. Such cunning machines in that ship: primitive but effective. They pushed open a doorway we had long forgotten, and all we had to do was help them through. I wonder where they thought they were going . . . A warship, yes, but small and pitiful compared to our glorious vessels. They came right to us, not knowing where they were or the danger they were in.
“We played with them for ages, teasing and tormenting as the impulse took us, delighting in their pain and horror. They cried so prettily. And then it occurred to us what a fine jest it would be to alter the ship and its crew in subtle, deadly ways and send them home again. To corrupt them body and soul and send them back to your world as a spiritual plague ship . . . We debated for hours, searching for something especially sweet and cruel and amusing . . . but that delay gave the crew of the ship time to recover. The Eldridge’s captain took control again, roused his crew, and had them reactivate their cunning machines. They forced the door open again and fled our shores in search of it. See and know what happened next . . .”
The images were clear and sharp in the scrying pool. The USS Eldridge was heading out to sea. Their decks were slick and running with blood and shit and other things, but the sailors ran frantically back and forth, leaping over dead and mutilated bodies where necessary while the captain screamed orders from the bridge. There were still enough of the crew left alive to do the work, though their faces were racked with memories of pain and rage and horror. On the bridge, the captain stared straight ahead with sunken dark eyes like cinders coughed up out of Hell.
Strange energies began to glow and crackle around the Eldridge as the powerful machinery packed into the compartments below began to operate. And that was when the elves attacked.
Huge three-masted sailing ships surged out after the Eldridge and soon overtook it, though there was scarcely wind enough to stir the massive sails. They circled lazily around the Eldridge, taunting the ship and its crew until the sailors manned the deck guns and opened fire. The cold iron of their ammunition punched through the sliver-thin hulls and made ragged messes of the spread sails. Elves danced and shimmered on their decks, moving too fast to be hit but unable to stay still long enough to operate their weapons. The Eldridge kept up a steady fire, blowing the elven ships apart inch by inch.
The elven vessels fell back, raging and frustrated, and the Eldridge sailed on.
Elf lords and ladies laughed merrily high in the sky, mounted on the back of a dragon. Not the ugly wyrms they’d been forced to use on Earth, but the real thing. Impossibly large, it hovered over the Eldridge like an eagle over its prey. The ship’s guns fired but could not touch it. The dragon opened its great mouth, and raging streams of liquid fire washed over the decks of the Eldridge, consuming sailors, blowing up guns and ammunition, and scorching the metalwork. The elves on the dragon’s back unlimbered strange unearthly weapons and blew great holes in the Eldridge’s superstructure. Sailors died in the hundreds, but some still manned the deck guns or fired up at the dragon with rifles or handguns.
The captain kept his ship going, heading right into the heat of the attack even as his bridge disintegrated about him, heading doggedly towards the door he knew had to be there, the door that would take his ship and his remaining crew home. A door out of the Hell he had brought them to. Even as his ship fell apart around him and his deck burned with dragonfire, even as his skin blistered and blackened, the captain battled on.
Until the green mists rose, and he headed the Eldridge into them, and the ship disappeared. Safe at last from elven rage and spite. My heart went out to the captain. He had no way of knowing that just getting home would not be enough. That his ship’s marvellous new equipment had been damaged or perhaps even sabotaged. That he would return home not in triumph but only to more horror. Because the Eldridge had been through Hell, and it had left its mark upon them all.
The final images faded from the scrying pool, and it was just golden blood upon the floor.
“We let them go, in the end,” said the Herald. “Their machineries were . . . interesting, but they could never have left our lands without our help and consent.”
“Why?” said Honey. Her voice was strained, hoarse. “After all you did to them, and planned to do, why . . . ?”
“They fought well,” said the Herald. “We admire courage. And by letting them pass through the gateway again, their science and our magic combined to do what neither could do alone: force it all the way open. An unsuspected back door into your world. We thought it might be useful someday.”
“You bastards,” said Honey.
“Easy,” murmured Walker.
“No!” said Honey. “Those were good men, doing their duty in a righteous war, and you—”
“Hush,” I said. “Hush.”
“We have given you what you required, little Drood,” said Queen Mab, entirely unaffected by Honey’s outburst. “Now you must give us what we require. Give us the Blue Fairy’s torc. It was not on his body when he returned to us, and it is ours by right.”
“He stole that torc from its rightful owner, nearly killing him in the process,” I said.
“What is that, to us?” said Queen Mab.
“Torcs belong to Droods and no one else,” I said. “That was true before you were sent away, and it’s still true now.”
“Such a childish attitude,” said Queen Mab, smiling lazily. “To have such pretty toys and to refuse to share them. Well, those who will not play nicely with others must be punished, for their own good. Do you really think you can defy me, little Drood?”
“Thought I’d give it a bloody good try,” I said.
“We have you,” said Queen Mab. “And so we have your torc, as well as his. You can either present them to us of your own free will and know our gratitude, or we will take them from your broken body. And from these torcs we shall learn to make more. Enough to equip an army of elves. And then we shall lead our people home, back through the unsuspected door . . . and take back what was ours from the treacherous little creatures who currently infest it. There shall be blood and horror and killing beyond your capacity to imagine, little Drood. And all because of you; because you came here and brought us what we need—”
She broke off because I was laughing at her. “Not going to happen,” I said cheerfully. “The source that powers our torcs and our armour resides with the Droods and answers only to us. It likes us. It would never work for such as you. It has much better taste than that.”