Going Under (44 page)

"At long last," said the Muse gently, stroking her belly. She bent down with some effort and picked the small round of the key out of the remains of Jack's mortal body. "What was knotted has been undone. Elf, you have ascended to the Fisher King's throne and you must keep it until a knight comes who is able to fathom your mystery. And it's okay to look at me ..."

Tath bowed. "The faeries are free to leave," he said. There was a sound like snapping strings, a twanging and pinging that was almost comical, and where the vast crowd had stood in a dim huddle like a body forest lights bloomed and colours shone out. Firework explosions of glory shot upwards and sideways as the smaller fey darted into the air. The sound of the group changed from silence to babble and then uproar which quieted down eventually into a new formation that wanted to watch and see what happened though they were itching to be away.

"Miss."

Lila realised after a minute that the woman was speaking to her. She couldn't feel a heartbeat or any breath under her hands. She couldn't feel the slightest presence of any aetheric body, although she had been imagining it so fiercely that sometimes, for seconds, she wasn't sure ... Slowly she dragged herself upright, the demon behind her keeping his hand on her shoulder for which she was grateful.

"I will take him."

"What are you?" Lila asked, her hands face up in her lap. She was quite relaxed now there was nothing to be done. "Is he dead?"

"I am one of the Three, the second sister. I have a lot of names, all of which are quite wrong. You may call me Lily. I like that name. For the flower."

"Lily, is he dead?"

"Almost. If he can be restored I will do it."

"And if not?"

"Then he will stay with me. He is one of our favourites. We aren't supposed to have such things but of course we do."

Lila thought about this. "Will you send him back to me?" she felt like a pathetic little kid for asking, but she couldn't help herself.

"If I can," the creature that was not really a woman or really a sister said. "And if not then I will take care of what remains until the end."

"Oh," Lila said, wishing it sounded better than it did. "Will you tell me what happens?"

"I will send a sign."

There was a moment in which the lady moved forward and Lila realised she was meant to move backward and give Zal up now. "Oh," she said again. She turned to look at Teazle, barely recognising him in the being that was behind her. He was so very bright, and though human in form seeming even less so. He just waited and kept her gaze and she realised that he wasn't about to either withhold or give her permission or tell her what to do. He was simply with her, whatever she did. "Oh."

Lila looked up at the tall woman through tears so thick she could barely see, though her brain tried hard to make adjustments. "I don't want to." She looked down at Zal. There was almost nothing to see except a deeper shadow on the ground, black traces that showed where limbs might be. When she tried to touch him again she felt nothing at all. He was vanishing before her eyes. She got up and moved backwards, Teazle at her shoulder, his hand on her arm.

The lady stooped down, again with effort and awkwardly because of her huge belly, and laid a scarf over Zal. It fluttered, caught on his form and by the wind, showing the clear outline of him before it fell flat on the ground. Colour soaked into it like a stain-the perfect twodimensional print of a small, curled up elf. She picked up the scarf and folded it gently and tucked it in the bosom of her robe.

"Is that it?" Lila asked.

"Yes," said not-Lily. "I look forward to meeting you again, Miss. For now however, our paths diverge. Let the final coil unfurl." She flicked the spiral of the key upwards into the air, turning over and over like a coin. They all watched it rise. As it fell Lily was already gone. The stones turned in place. The faeries gasped and then the bottom fell out of the world and they all fell down.

eazle had a steel grip and Lila felt it keep hold of her during the unfathomable drop that followed. She felt it even in the sleep that descended on her almost immediately and stayed over her for a long time before at last it lifted, bit by bit, without dreams, and left her on a stone floor in a dark place that was warm but without light. The demon was already awake. As she first began to move he released her arm though she felt and heard him slide one of his feet to the place where her bottom met the floor, and stay there so she didn't lose all contact.

"It's dark," she said.

"I can see in the dark," he murmured smugly and then her arms and legs appeared before her and her shadow appeared on the stone flags. She looked back and saw him beside her, glowing powerfully like a giant two-hundred-watt action figure. He grinned.

She looked around. They were in a huge hall, with statues-no, not statues, immobilised real living figures-ranged rather carelessly down both sides and into the visible distance.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"The Hall of Champions of the Light," he said, and added, "it says so on each of the inscriptions."

She didn't know what to say so she didn't say anything. She felt completely empty. From the jewel at her ear the imp suddenly expanded and sat on her shoulder.

"Oh man," he said with feeling. "Putzes in all directions. Where's the exit?"

Lila got to her feet slowly and Teazle mirrored her, finally letting go. She felt a kind of comfort, because she was nowhere she knew, doing nothing she recognised, with no agenda. Vaguely she remembered that she had still not found anyone to deal with the moths and so she thought maybe she'd read along the lines of statues and see if anyone here looked like they could be useful. She was aware that her thoughts weren't entirely rational but ignored this notion as of no importance. The Zal-shaped wound in her required better stitching than the feeble cause and effect of reason.

She approached the nearest figure, walking quite a ways, and finding it larger and bolder than she thought. It wore a medieval-style suit of armour with a sword. The suspended animation which held the person fast had captured her at a moment of inquiry-something she discovered ten minutes later on the second, third, and fourth statues with their odd, nearly incomprehensible faery legends written on the wall beside them. She realised it must be because it was a surprising and curious thing to be suddenly approached by a faery who spirited you away and turned you into a statue. They reminded her of the demon figurines in the market at Bathshebat.

"Are they in there?" she asked Thingamajig, peering up at the bushy bearded face of a scholarly looking man who still had several rolls of paper stuffed under one arm and a glass in his other hand. Bradbury Gwynn: scrivener, visionary, prophet (alleged), spiritual leader, charismatic preacher read the inscription in careless, spidery writing that had been completed by a finger dipped in ink. Arsehole, dipstick, rabblerousing twithead, read the additional inscription that had been added by a different finger dipped in something bright yellow.

"Yeah for sure," the imp said approvingly. "But they're not doing anything. The whole thing's frozen in a temporal spell. They don't even know they're here. This entire hall is completely outside the normal timestream. I've never been outside it before. I wonder what timestream we are in. Must belong to another universe, which means we've dropped down the faery gravity hole and are on the brink at the other side-so this is beyond the lowest point theoretically, but not of course actually since this still counts as the faery bottoms and there are even places below it though I never imagined them might actually be in another time altogether, one which shares our aetheric dimensions ... my word, imagine what the old scientists in Bathshebat would make of this! Bastards. Serves them right they don't know after the way they treated me!"

Teazle said nothing as this rant went on, just acted as a lightbearer for Lila as she continued perusing. Finally she had to admit that none of these looked useful. The best of them were scholars or knights or religious figures of various sorts, the worst apparently ordinary in every way. Most of them were human. Some were light elves, of the Tath variety. There were no demons, nor any other kind of creature. She grew bored and began to look for the exit, as Thingamajig had suggested.

"Which way?" she looked up and down.

The imp shrugged. They walked the way they were facing.

After an hour they spied a familiar figure and in another ten minutes they were beside Bradbury Gwynn once more.

"Are we supposed to be in here?" Lila asked, doubting it.

"Not me," Teazle said with confidence. He reached to his shoulder and drew one of his swords, the yellow one, and chopped Bradbury Gwynn in half. The body collapsed to the floor in a splatter of blood, guts, and matter and instantly they heard a screaming protest in the distance which resolved quickly into a running faery of some small, monkeylike variety, clad in inkstained clothing and carrying a bucket of ink which was empty by the time he reached them. In his tail he held a bucket of yellow paint.

"Vandal!" screeched the monkey faery. "How am I meant to clean this up? By Zuma's tooth, when they said everything was opening up again I didn't think it meant visitors down here. But at least you're not trying to liberate them." It said this last with a great roll of eyes and labouring of the word liberate which indicated clearly what it thought of this idea.

"We want to leave," Lila said.

"But you've killed him!" the monkey complained. "Our motto, in case you didn't read the literature, is To Conserve We Trust. No? Oh very well, where do you want to go?"

"I need to find Moguskul," Lila said, dimly remembering the name.

"Myeh," the monkey sighed, shaking its small head. "He's way up. I'll send you to the closest version, the Lord of the Wild Hunt-that's the one before he had a real name, not the one after. Why you want to find him is beyond me since he tends to shorten the life experience rather, but it's no less than you deserve. And, by the way, since you've brought me a donation I am forced to offer you something from the Hoard." He snapped his fingers.

The hall was suddenly filled to the roof with an enormous pile of treasure. Gold, gems, weapons, armour, statuary-every conceivable object of value and many of dubious or no value were represented there in a vast, unruly mess. It completely buried everything in sight.

"Donation?" Lila said.

"Donation," the monkey pointed firmly with its inkstained finger at Thingamajig. "One donation, one ... whatever you want. Come on, come on, pick something." It gestured irritably at the heap of incalculable wealth.

"Donation?" the imp said, hands on hips. "Do-fucking-nation?"

"Donation," the monkey said, narrowing its eyes and writing in the air with its finger, obviously expecting the imp to follow its scribbles.

"No way," Thingamajig said forcefully. "I don't even ..." he stopped, frozen in place. "Hey, you know," he began to object, "that was strictly a matter of o-pin-ee-yun there. I did not eliminate the Atlantean civilisation on Earth, as was, only for the sake of avoiding a global conflict of armageddive proportions, thus sparing the lives of millions of future innocents. And in my defense you really ought to see just how many nutjobs have picked up the pens of war as a result of said destruction and brought insanity and the usual stupidity of literal apprehension of strictly metaphorical and allegorical materials into play as mind control weapons of mass destruction in the aftermath, so I hardly think it fucking counts as a deed for the Light. Plus, look at all the civilisations I completely missed out on. Look at the scheming idiots YOU missed out on. Do you really think Bradbury Gwendolyn here was going to do more than burn a few witches and do some infinitesimal man-bit for keeping women chained to the sink? He hardly had the charisma required to start any kind of major movement other than the kind required to dump his bowels. On the other hand Lendi- enlin-li-lin-can't-say-his-fucking-name Voynassi you leave out and free to go starting the Shadow Conspiracy like he was some kind of minor Bible salesman. Am I not making a point here?"

The monkey thinned its lips and glared at him.

"Oh for Pete's sake ... !" the imp shrieked. "Fine, fine. What- EVAH. How long do I have to stay in this miserable shithole?"

The monkey put down the ink bucket, licked its finger, and produced a small notebook from somewhere about its person. It pointed at an official-looking notice that was almost entirely obliterated by fruit stains. "You can halve the term by performing light duties and accounts," the monkey said. "Or you can choose to spend it suspended. Won't seem like a minute, relatively speaking. That's all we ever ask for, a minute of your time."

"And eternity in an hour ... Fuck!" the imp said and sighed. "All right. But don't think I won't remember this." It hopped off Lila's shoulder and down onto the floor in the only space not entirely crammed full of the wealth of ages. He pushed at a gold-bound book with one foot and sighed heavily again. "Busted, I guess. Listen," and he looked up at Lila with genuine regret and a little sheepishness. "Never be an idealist, my dear. Our love affair has to end here. Now don't cry on me. You knew it was always comin' to this. I'll be out one day ... course you'll be probably dead and smelted by then, although maybe I'd find a way to sneak back-anyway-doesn't matter too much. Point is here I ..." he stumbled and coughed a little bit. "You should pick something like the monkey says. Some nice loot here. Waste not want not or whatevah."