Страница 63 из 90
Had to be a trap. It’s always a trap, with the elves.
Wisps of green mist appeared around the Hope Street, materialising out of nowhere; long green streamers twisting and turning on the air as the boat rose and fell on increasingly violent swells. The mists thickened steadily; elf magic, summoned into being by our proximity to the doorway. The thick green fog was cutting us off from our world, bending the rules of our reality to make easier the transition to the Land Beneath the Hill. Walker and Peter scrambled up out of their chairs and hurried over to join Honey and me at the wheel. We all felt the need for simple human contact.
The boat was thrown all over the place; the fog was all around us. Honey struggled to hold the Hope Street on course. It felt like . . . leaving all certainty behind us, losing everything we’d learned to depend on. As though the ship itself might fall apart and disappear into the green mists . . .
“We’re almost there,” said Walker. “I can feel the doorway right ahead. Feels like staring down a gun barrel.”
“I don’t feel that,” said Honey. “I don’t feel anything. Except that it’s really cold in here, all of a sudden. And my skin’s prickling, like the feeling you get right before a lightning strike. And I’m not sure I’m steering this boat anymore. The wheel’s stopped fighting me, but it’s not answering me, either. I think . . . this boat knows where it needs to go.” She took her hands off the wheel, and nothing happened. The Hope Street was still on course.
“The storm’s getting worse!” yelled Peter above the howl of the rising winds outside. “Listen to it!”
“I don’t think that’s the storm,” I said. “The door is opening.”
“So we’ll be safe once we’re through the door?”
“Well,” I said. “I wouldn’t go that far . . .”
“I want to go home,” Peter said miserably.
The green fog was boiling all around us now, thick bottle green mists that isolated and insulated us from the outside world. Strange lights flared and sputtered inside the cabin. They smarted where they touched my bare skin, making it crawl with revulsion. There was something basically unclean about the green fog. It smelled of sulphur and blood and strange animal musks. It was getting hard to see anything, even inside the cabin. The Hope Street pressed on, not bucking or heaving nearly so much now but travelling faster and faster, like a runaway train.
“One problem,” I said.
“Only one?” Honey said immediately. “I can think of hundreds!”
“Getting through the door isn’t going to be a problem,” I said. “I think it recognises my torc. But getting back again . . . might prove a little tricky.”
“Terrific,” said Peter. “Why don’t we all just throw ourselves overboard and swim back?”
“I wouldn’t,” said Walker. “I’m pretty sure we’re no longer in our world, as such. No water, no sky; just green mists. We’re in the soft place now, the in-between place. And it smells really bad.”
“Throw yourself overboard here,” I said, “and there’s no saying where you might end up.”
“I may cry a little, if that wouldn’t upset anyone,” said Peter.
“Stand tall, man,” said Walker. “You show weakness in front of the elves, and you’ll be carrying your testicles home in a goody bag.”
“You’re really not helping,” said Peter.
“It’s not as if we’re going in there alone,” said Honey. “I’m CIA, remember? I can call on serious backup and resources and dirty tricks even elves have never thought of.”
“They won’t care,” said Walker. “I speak for the Nightside. I have powerful friends, and enemies, who’ll come if I call or who would avenge my death. But the elves will still kill us if they have reason to, or even if they don’t. They are creatures of whim and malice and have no care at all for consequences.”
Honey looked at me. “But you’re a Drood, Eddie. You even ran your family for a while. They wouldn’t dare touch you.”
“Elves dare,” I said. “It’s what they do. My family would certainly avenge my death, might even do terrible things to the Sundered Lands . . . but still the elves will do what they will do, and no one can predict or punish them. And, as I said, the elves do have good reason to want me dead. Or worse.”
“Maybe we should have left you behind,” said Walker.
“You’d never get in without me,” I said.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” said Peter.
“So,” said Honey. “No backup and no threats we can use to enforce our position. Not really what I wanted to hear.”
“Have the CIA ever had any direct dealings with elves?” said Peter. “Not because I particularly care, you understand; I’d just like people to keep talking to distract me from thinking about all the terrible things still to come.”
“Quite understandable,” said Honey. She gave the wheel a good turn, and then watched it sway back and forth, not affecting the Hope Street in the least. “If the Company ever did have direct dealings with elves—which is possible on the grounds that the Company has had dealings with far worse in its time, when necessary, and no, I’m not going to go into details—it would all have taken place on a much higher level than mine. I’m only ever told what I need to know, when I need to know it.”
“Trust me,” I said. “Elves are powerful creatures, yes, but at heart they’re just another bunch of aristocratic snobs who think they’re better than anyone else. And I’ve been talking rings around creeps like that my whole life. I’ll get us in, and I’ll get us back home again, and I might just get us the keys to the city and a big box of chocolates to take home with us while I’m at it.”
“That’s it,” said Peter. “He’s delirious.”
“Trust a Drood?” said Honey. “Things aren’t that desperate. Not yet, anyway.”
“Getting damned close,” muttered Peter.
“Shut up, Peter,” said Walker, not unkindly.
The green fog filled the cabin now, thick and unrelenting. I couldn’t see the cabin. Couldn’t see anything except Honey and Walker and Peter. We linked arms and held hands to make sure we wouldn’t be separated. We were all breathing hard, as though there was less and less air in the fog. It smelled like the crushed petals of flowers from other worlds, like the breeze off unknown alien seas, like the stench of piled-up bodies of creatures that could never have thrived in our world. It smelled of elves. The stench raised the hackles on the back of my neck, tugging at all my deepest fears. As though my very DNA remembered elves and cringed at the thought of encountering them again.
All perfectly normal and sensible. Any sane man would be afraid of elves. But I had been here before, walked in the Fae Courts before, and I knew how to handle them. If I could just stay alive long enough.
The Hope Street dropped suddenly, as though the water had been snatched out from under her, and we all fell sprawling, crying out to each other as we were forcibly separated. The green mists rushed away in all directions, revealing the gateway hanging open and beckoning before us. I couldn’t look at it directly; it hurt my eyes and my mind. It wasn’t real, as we understand real things. It was an insult to everything humans understand about how our universe works. Elf magic; elf thinking.
I subvocalised my activating Words, and the golden armour slipped around me in a moment, hugging me tight like a friend or a lover, determined to stand between me and all danger. I picked myself up and made myself look at the doorway directly through my golden mask. It still hurt like hell, but I could stand it, perhaps because the torc’s strange matter was just as u
We weren’t moving. The boat was hovering, held where she was on the edge of the event horizon, as though the door was waiting for . . . something. I reached out with a golden hand and thrust it into the energies pulsing before me. I took a firm hold, and then pulled with all my armoured strength. The boat surged forward, and we were on our way.