Herbie Brennan - Faerie Lord

‘Blue!’ Henry shouted in sudden alarm.

Blue changed. Henry watched it happen. In an eye blink she was a mature woman, her hair streaked with grey, the first clear signs of furrows on her brow. Then just as suddenly she was old – not old the way Pyrgus was old when Henry saw him on Mr Fogarty’s lawn, but really old, like Mr Fogarty himself or Madame Cardui. She still stood upright and there was the familiar hint of arrogance in the tilt of her head, but otherwise she was hardly recognisable.

‘Blue!’ Henry screamed again.

The change in Lorquin was, if anything, even more spectacular. He looked across at Henry and gave his bright, familiar smile. But it was a smile on the face of a man now, handsome, tall and broad and proud. It was the smile of a hero who had fought hard and seen much.

Then the wings swept back and folded and suddenly Blue was Blue again and Lorquin was a boy.

Henry heard his own voice shout, ‘Don’t go near the cage!’

Blue said quietly, ‘We must release him – he’s in pain.’

Of course the angel was in pain. He’d been confined in this cage – in this reality – unable to stand upright for weeks. But worse was the magic Brimstone had used to confine him: it burned the angel’s body like hot irons. Henry knew all this, but he didn’t know how he knew.

The angel turned its head and looked deep into his eyes.

‘We must release him,’ Blue said again.

The angel was talking to Henry, but talking without words. It was the strangest sensation, intimate and warm, like being with somebody and discovering you were in love. No wonder these creatures had been worshipped. Knowledge flowed from the angel’s mind into Henry’s own. No wonder they had been called Messengers.

Blue made to move forward again, but this time Henry was too quick for her. He darted forward and grabbed her arm, if you go any closer, it will kill you,’ he said soberly.

Blue looked at him blankly, then looked at the angel. ‘He wouldn’t harm me,’ she said, a little dreamily.

‘He doesn’t want to,’ Henry told her. ‘But he shouldn’t be in this reality. He distorts it, changes the flow of time. It’s worse when he moves those wings – they send currents out across the whole Realm – but if you get too close, it doesn’t matter whether he’s moving or not. Just being near him will kill you.’

The dreamy look vanished from Blue’s face. ‘How are we going to free him?’ she asked.

‘We’re not going to free him,’ Henry said. ‘I am.’

Blue caught on at once, ‘It won’t affect you because you’re from the Analogue World? This isn’t your reality, so you can get close to him without it killing you?’

Henry took a deep breath, ‘I think so.’ He hoped to heaven Blue would leave it at that, not ask any more questions.

‘Are you sure?’ Blue asked.

Henry let go of her arm. ‘Only one way to find out,’ he said. And walked towards the cage.

Chief Wizard Healer Danaus frowned. He was looking down on the frozen body of the Forest Princess Nymphalis, locked in stasis beside the body of her husband, Prince Pyrgus. Both showed the age ravages of temporal fever, Pyrgus more than Nymph so far – since stasis ceased to hold the fever, he had turned into an old, old man – but Nymph certainly. From a young woman she had transformed into a mature woman, a middle-aged woman really, and he had been vaguely considering increasing the intensity of the stasis field. Not that he believed it would do any good – you were either in stasis or you weren’t – but he disliked the feeling of helplessness that came when there was absolutely nothing one could do. Thus he stood staring at Nymphalis and… and she looked a little younger.

Which was impossible, of course. The temporal fever was a one-way trip. Even when stasis still stabilised it, nothing reversed the effect. So possibly he was imagining it. Wishful thinking sometimes had an influence on observation, even trained observation. All the same, he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling she seemed younger. Her skin tone looked better. He could have sworn there were fewer, if only just a little fewer, wrinkles.

On impulse, Danaus stepped across to the stasis cabinet that held Pyrgus. The shock was so great that he actually gasped aloud. Pyrgus too looked younger, a lot younger. There was no possibility of a mistake. The effects of the fever were reversing.

For once Danaus forgot his dignity and ran down to the wards. But even before he reached them, the commotion told him something dramatic was happening. As he burst into the corridor nurses were scampering in all directions, healers were hurrying to and fro, but most astonishing, most amazing, most bewildering of all was the fact that patients were on their feet as well, patients who just that morning on his rounds had been lying in deep comas.

Danaus grabbed the arm of a blue-coated healer as he hurried past. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘Spontaneous remissions,’ the healer told him shortly.

It was the sort of stupid thing they’d all been trained to say when they had no idea what was actually happening, ‘I can see that,’ Danaus snapped. ‘What’s caused them?’

The healer shook his head. ‘Don’t know, sir.’ Then, annoyingly, he smiled. ‘But it’s great news, is it not, sir?’

Great news but bewildering. By the time Danaus had made a few cursory examinations to convince himself the effect was genuine, reports were pouring in from outside of "spontaneous remissions" throughout the capital city. He had not the slightest doubt that similar news from the surrounding country would be arriving soon.

With so many patients suddenly recovering, the administration burden was heavy and it was late afternoon before he suddenly remembered Nymph and Pyrgus were still in stasis. And hot on the heels of that realisation came another: Madame Cardui was in stasis too. He’d had her placed there as a matter of course for a woman her age even though all the evidence was it would no longer hold back her disease. What else could he do? Stasis might have staved off her inevitable death for a few more hours. Or she might be dead already.

Or possibly she’d undergone a spontaneous remission like all the rest.

He was on his way to find out when someone told him Queen Blue had returned to the Purple Palace.

It was raining, of course. Since he’d inherited Burgundy’s old Keep, Lord Hairstreak had found it more economical to leave the weather spells in place than have them neutralised. So the Keep remained exactly as it had been when Hamearis was alive, a Gothic nightmare clinging to a cliff edge, buffeted by breakers and lashed by heavy rain and howling winds.

No matter. It suited his mood.

Hairstreak climbed out onto the battlements, wrapping his cloak around him. From this vantage point, he could see the approach road and the angry sea. There were no ouklos, no carriages of any sort. There were no boats, no flyers overhead. No one visited now. If they had, there were no servants to greet them.

The chill insinuated itself inside his cloak, but he ignored it. Where, he wondered, had it all gone wrong? It seemed such a very short time ago since the whole world and its potential had stretched endlessly before him. His sister married to the Purple Emperor. His followers solidly behind him. It had seemed only a matter of time – and a short time at that – before the Faeries of the Night took control of the Realm, with himself at their head.

How different things looked now. His brother-in-law, Apatura Iris, the old Purple Emperor, dead, resurrected and dead again. His daughter on the throne. Hairstreak’s old demon ally, Beleth, dead as well and Blue now Queen of Hael. All the old alliances and arrangements in tatters. The Lighters more firmly in control than they’d been for centuries. How had it all gone so horribly wrong?