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I could feel the steady pressure of the elves’ regard as I walked through their massed ranks. It’s not easy, walking through a crowd of people, any of whom might kill you in a moment, for any reason, or none. The skin on my back crawled in anticipation of an attack that never came. I could sense as much as feel my companions all but treading on my heels, crowding in close behind me.
And then the ranks of elves fell away abruptly, revealing a great and wondrous city. Miles and miles of buildings like works of art, like dreams cast in stone and marble and other things. Dreams, and nightmares. I led the way through the massive central gate carved from the skull of a dragon. A single skull bigger than a house. All the teeth had been yanked out of its long jaws, and the empty eye sockets were crammed with strange alien flowers. They writhed and hissed at me as I passed by them, my attention fixed on the city.
The streets were wide and wandering. Distorted buildings towered to every side, all of them different, individual, diseased, like the cu
In a small open square we passed by an elf who had been made into a statue and forced to function as a fountain. Water gushed from his open eyes and mouth, but I could still make out enough of his face to know he was still alive, and aware, and suffering. Later, we passed by a heap of severed hands, piled up as tall as a man, with all the fingers still twitching. The impact of the overbright sun beat down on my head, and my bare skin stung and smarted from the light, as though exposed to strange alien radiations.
A dragon flew by overhead. Not the ugly wyrms the elves ride when they come to earth, but the real thing: vast and glorious, bigger than a jumbo jet, with wings so huge and wide they hardly moved as the dragon flew past. Very beautiful, and very deadly. Half a dozen dragons could take out any human city. Fortunately, there aren’t half a dozen of them left anymore.
We stopped abruptly to let a huge beast go by: a great u
Honey moved forward to walk beside me. Behind me, I could hear Walker murmuring comfortingly to Peter. Of course the elf world wouldn’t bother Walker; he was used to the Nightside.
“You’ve been here before, Eddie,” said Honey. Her voice was steady but strained. “What are the protocols for meeting the Queen?”
“Damned if I know,” I said. “It’s always different here and in the Fae Court. The city didn’t look anything like this the last time I was here. The sea and the sky weren’t those colours. The Elven Lands are always changing. They like it that way. I suppose when you’re immortal, you can get tired of things pretty quickly.”
“I thought you said they weren’t immortal,” said Honey.
“They’re not, but they might as well be. Either way, don’t tell them they’re not immortal. They tend to take it rather badly.”
“What brought you here before? I thought you were just a London field agent.”
“I was,” I said. “But you go where family needs you to go. A few years back, an elf called Peaseblossom came to London and misbehaved himself on a rather grander scale than usual. My family got word he’d been abducting small children and carrying them away; easy enough to do with his glamour. I was sent after him to get the children back, but by the time I tracked down his squalid little lair, he’d already eaten three of them.” I stopped for a moment, remembering the cold rage, the bitter helplessness . . . “I was ready to kill him on sight, but there are ancient pacts between the Droods and the Fae. The best I could do was find him, kick the crap out of him, and then send him back to the Fae Court for punishment.
“But then things got complicated . . . It turned out Peaseblossom hadn’t come to London for children. They were just appetisers. He was on his way to the Old Soul Market in Crouch End Towen. The fool.
“Elves don’t have souls. Not as such. Or at least nothing we’d recognise as a soul. Peaseblossom wanted to buy one for himself. Not as difficult as you’d think, and not actually a problem in itself, but . . . the Old Soul Market is almost as ancient as the elves, and the proprietors didn’t take kindly to discovering that Peaseblossom thought he could just waltz in and demand their very best merchandise and expect to pay on credit. So they mugged and rolled him, locked him in a cage, and made arrangements to sell his stuffed and mounted corpse to the Collector. (Apparently Peaseblossom was considered a collector’s item because he’d been name-checked in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.) Which was fine by me, but I was ordered to get the elf out and take him home before he started a war. So I went down into the London Warrens and the Subterranean Ways and retrieved Peaseblossom via my usual blend of calm reason, calculated diplomacy, and applied mayhem. And was he grateful? What do you think? So I beat the crap out of him on general principles and took him home to the Fae Court.”
“You do get around, don’t you?” said Honey. “So the elves are beholden to you? They owe you, for your help?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “It’s more complicated than that. It always is, with elves.”
“It always is with you,” said Walker, appearing suddenly on my other side. “Why did you kill all those elves, Eddie?”
“Because they were trying to kill me,” I said. “It was an honest enough fight; no one cheated more than usual. But still, there are many here who would just love to watch me die slowly and horribly. Except they can’t kill me, because then they’d never be able to pay me back the favour they owe.”
“But if they tried to kill you before . . .” said Honey.
“I was rogue then,” I said. “Disowned by my family. Fair game. Now that I’m a Drood again and back in good standing with my family, they can’t touch me. Unless they can find a way to justify it to themselves. Elf honour is . . . complicated. Remember, everyone: once we get to the Fae Court, don’t eat or drink anything they offer you, don’t speak unless you’re spoken to directly, and don’t start anything. Leave that to me. And above all don’t try to have sex with them or you’ll be carrying your genitals home in a bag.”
“Was that last bit really necessary?” said Walker.
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “Okay, people; look sharp and cool and very confident. We’re here.”
We had come at last to Caer Dhu, the last great castle of Faerie, brought here in its entirety from our world, long and long ago. Caer Dhu, home to the Unseeli Court and the rulers of Faerie. Once, and for many, many years, that had been King Oberon and Queen Titania, but if Queen Mab really was back . . . then just maybe the returned Queen had had new thoughts about the old pacts that bound the Droods and the Fae.
From the outside, Caer Dhu looked like a huge golden crown: a massive raised dome surrounded by hundreds of golden spikes reaching up into the sky. And on those spikes, transfixed and impaled, hundreds of elves. Still alive, still suffering, their golden blood steaming endlessly down the long spikes, collecting in the guttering and gushing from the mouths of screaming gargoyle faces. Elves are very hard to kill, but that’s not always a good thing. Above the entrance, a dozen lesser spikes held up severed elf heads. The faces were still alive and aware, and their mouths moved when they saw us approach, as through trying to warn or curse us.