Herbie Brennan - Faerie Lord

‘Henry!’ Blue was at his side, gripping his wrist, jerking his arm, knocking him off balance so that his knife thrust missed the dragon completely and he fell – they both fell – in a heap as the creature rushed past.

‘What are you doing?’ Henry demanded as he fought to extricate himself from her grasp.

‘Halek won’t work,’ Blue gasped as they were climbing to their feet.

‘Hammer’s the only thing will work,’ the charno said and dropped the huge war hammer at their feet.

‘I can’t lift the bloody hammer!’ Henry screamed at it.

There was a roar that shook his bones, a horrid scrambling of talons on stone. He swung round to find the dragon had turned, ready for another charge.

‘The Halek knife’s no good against it!’ Blue shouted in his ear.

They were together now. At least they would die together. Along with the charno, probably. From somewhere to his left he caught a flash of blue. Lorquin was trying to join in the action. Lorquin would die too. All of them, all dead.

The dragon pawed the floor like a bull.

‘Why don’t you use the hammer?’ Henry yelled at the charno. The charno had carried the weapon here and seemed able to wave it around like a feather.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said the charno.

This was such a mess! Such a God-awful, lethal, Henry style of mess, like his whole miserable life. Mother and father in the process of divorce… no idea where he was going or what he should be doing… the girl he loved about to die because he couldn’t save her…

‘I can’t even lift the hammer,’ Henry said to Blue plaintively.

‘I know,’ Blue said, ‘I couldn’t lift it either.’

The dragon charged.

Blue said, ‘Maybe we could lift it together.’

Lorquin ran at the dragon from the side, wielding exactly the same sort of crude flint blade as the one Henry had already broken.

Blue and Henry swooped on the war hammer lying on the floor. Their hands reached out together, gripped the shaft together. They lifted the war hammer easily, swung it above their heads. Lorquin jumped astride the dragon’s tail and stabbed down with his blade, which shattered against the armoured scales exactly as Henry’s had done. The dragon didn’t even seem to notice. It was only yards away now. Its head darted forward, neck stretched. Its mouth gaped like a fiery cavern. Blue and Henry swung the hammer.

The weapon connected with the dragon’s snout and exploded in a shower of sparks. There was the most curious ripping sound Henry had ever heard. The platform and the lava stream both vanished. Light poured through an archway into the cavern. The dragon transformed for an instant into a gigantic serpent that seemed miraculously to fill the world, then disappeared. Lorquin, who’d been riding on the tail, fell to the ground, but bounded up at once, grinning broadly.

‘You did it, En Ri!’ he called excitedly. ‘You slew the dragon!’

‘I think we sent it home,’ said Blue.

Henry couldn’t keep his hands off her. He hugged her, kissed her cheek, kissed her nose, hugged her again. He slipped off his jacket and wrapped it round her to cover up the torn blouse. Then his emotions overcame him and he hugged her a third time. Blue didn’t seem to mind. ‘Nice to see you too,’ she murmured with a little smile.

Henry did an odd thing. With his arm around her waist, he led her over to the small blue boy and made a formal introduction: ‘Lorquin, this is Prin- this is Queen Blue of the Faerie Realm. Blue, this is Lorquin.’ He hesitated for a heartbeat before adding, ‘My Companion.’

The boy looked pleased, and bowed. Sensing something important was going on here, Blue bowed back.

Henry glanced towards the platform and the pillar. ‘How did it happen? The dragon and everything?’

‘Long story,’ Blue said, ‘I was looking for you.’

‘I was looking for you!’ Henry grinned happily. He felt like an idiot, but a happy idiot. It was a long time since he’d felt so happy. He hugged her again.

Blue said, ‘You’ll squish me, Henry.’ But she was smiling and it didn’t seem like an invitation to stop, so Henry kissed her. She closed her eyes and kissed him back.

‘We faced a dragon!’ he murmured when they stopped.

Blue’s smile broadened.

‘We all need to go home,’ the charno said. It gave a long, slow blink of its huge brown eyes and added, ‘If you two have finished smooching.’

‘Can you find our way out?’ Henry asked Lorquin.

‘He may not have to,’ Blue said, glancing towards the archway. ‘That looks like sunlight.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Henry, wondering vaguely why he hadn’t thought of that. He felt high, as if his feet were floating inches off the ground. He slid his arm from around her waist and ran across the cavern to find out the source of the light. He stepped through the archway and stopped. He backed away a pace and stopped. His jaw dropped.

‘Good God!’ Henry whispered.

Blue joined him within seconds, then Lorquin. All three stood in the archway staring into the light.

After a long moment, Blue said hoarsely, ‘What is it, Henry?’

‘It’s an angel,’ Henry said.

Henry felt like an iron filing in the presence of a magnet. He was frightened, but he took a small step forward. The others must have felt the same, for they moved blankly alongside him. The creature in the cage was like nothing he’d ever seen before. It had the shape of a man, but far taller – nearly eight feet – so that it stooped to fit into the cage. It was muscled like a human torso, but there any resemblance ended.

The angel shone. Every square inch of its skin fluoresced the way things did under ultraviolet light. But beyond that, it glowed like some gigantic lamp, emitting a dense white light that hurt the eyes if you looked at it too long. But even that was not the strangest thing. The strangest thing was its wings.

Henry had seen angel wings before, lots of them. His books were full of them when he studied History of Art and he’d even seen them carved in marble that time his mother dragged the family on a cultural tour of Britain’s cathedrals. But those wings were nothing like these. The artists and sculptors had all visualised great white feathered birdy things, as if angels had the shoulder muscles to fly like an eagle. The wings Henry was looking at now were nothing like that. They weren’t feathered and they weren’t even white. In fact, in a peculiar way, they didn’t seem to be there at all.

Henry blinked. The angel’s wings stretched out behind him in shimmering fans of radiant energy that sparkled violet and writhed like the aurora borealis. They were probably the most beautiful things he had ever seen in his life. He’d never been a particularly religious boy, but there was something about those wings that made him want to fall down on his knees and worship.

Blue took another step forward with Lorquin at her side and Henry’s urge to worship suddenly evaporated. ‘Careful!’ he hissed in the sort of whisper you always felt you had to use inside a church. Then, when they took no notice, he said sharply and more loudly, ‘Don’t get too close!’ His stomach had knotted. For some reason he was convinced the angel was every bit as dangerous as the dragon.

Blue ignored him as usual. She had a curiously vacant smile on her face and her eyes were wide. Lorquin looked even more peculiar. His face was ecstatic, but his eyes were utterly blank. Together they took another step forward so that now they were no more than a few feet from the cage.

The angel moved its position and the sweep of energy from those weird wings flowed outward to envelop Blue and Lorquin.