The White Wolf's Son: The Albino Underground

  “Why do you need gold to get there?”

  “Gold’s what I said I’d seek, and gold’s what will preserve my reputation. I can find my way on the moonbeam roads but never find my nation. The maps must be bought fresh every six months. And such maps are expensive.”

  “What if I put you on your way? The secrets of the silver roads are mine.” Oona stepped towards him.

  “I would still need gold.”

  “We’ll give you gold,” said Kushy. “And if FräUlein Oona can guide you to your home, will you free our master and his friends?”

  “I’ll do my best with my rusty powers,” promised Clement Schnooke. “You all know me and what I’m capable of. For in spite of Lord Renyard’s repression, half of you have sought me out for potions and spells over the years, and I’ve obliged.”

  “At high prices,” declared an old woman.

  “Reasonable, sister, given the risks.”

  “You’ve killed more than one customer,” accused another. “You’re hated here and you know it. Frau Fröhlich caught the palsy, and Herr Nipkoch shrieked his life away for days before he died. We know Fröhlich the carpenter failed to pay you to harm his wife. And then his nose turned black and his head dropped off.”

  Clement Schnooke smiled and bowed. “I appreciate your endorsements, my friends. They have brought me customers and added to my small savings.”

  “Well,” said Kushy. “We’d be rid of you, so here’s a way we can all be served.”

  Schnooke sneered and postured. “Give me a day or so and I’ll have your master free. It will cost you a century in gold.”

  “By weight?”

  “No, fool! By time! Yes, of course by weight. A hundred kilos.”

  This caused noisy concern among the denizens of Raspazian’s. But after a while his terms were agreed to, and Clement Schnooke departed.

  “I must return to the Sebastocrater’s prison and warn Lord Renyard what’s soon to happen,” said Oona. “Kushy and the rest will keep you safe.”

  Soon she was gone; I was back on my own in Lord Renyard’s library. But this time I looked for specific books, for what I guessed was the source of Clement Schnooke’s sorcerous craft. I found several books and studied them with an intensity I’d never given to my lessons.

  By the following evening Oona was back. She brought me another pork pie, some crisps and a pickled onion. I couldn’t help suspecting she had stopped off at the pub as an afterthought, but I’ve always loved pickled onions and was famished. There weren’t too many English pubs in Mirenburg.

  “How’s Lord Renyard and the others?” I asked.

  “No change. And my Kakatanawa are still frozen. Horrible as he is, I’m desperately hoping that this man Schnooke can do something, though Klosterheim and von Minct will probably counter him. What would you think of paying a visit to the Sebastocrater?”

  “Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

  “Maybe. But with Clement Schnooke attacking from one direction, that might distract our enemies enough for us to find out how they are persuading the prince to behave so uncharacteristically.”

  “What if we fail?” I asked.

  “We have my bow. And the panther.” Her grin reassured me. “And while I have no desire to place you in danger, I somehow feel you would be safer in my company than if I left you here.”

  “I know I’d certainly feel safer,” I agreed.

  “Then let’s wait awhile just to see what Clement Schnooke can do.”

  For the rest of the day I slept and ate or talked to the dreamthief’s daughter. She answered many of my questions, but she avoided those to do with her family and her relationship to mine. “And if we were related, you’d no doubt be in greater danger from that pair,” she said. “All you need to know is that I’m the dreamthief’s daughter.”

  Laughing, she told me to mind my own business, that what were dreams in one world of the multiverse were realities in another.

  “What exactly is a dreamthief?” I asked.

  “I’m not a dreamthief,” she told me.

  “Schnooke said you were.”

  “I’m a dreamthief’s daughter. I know some of the simpler tricks of the profession, but I didn’t want to follow my mother’s calling. I took a small inheritance from her, when it seemed she had died. I became a wanderer across the multiverse, walking the moonbeam paths, looking for my ideal world and a companion to share it with.”

  “And did you ever find them?”

  “I certainly did. But I had to give them up again.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Someone we loved was in danger. Something we valued was threatened.”

  “You won’t say any more?”

  “Not yet. I promise I’ll tell you more when I can be sure it’s safe to do so.”

  “You have enemies of your own, not just Klosterheim and his mate?”

  “I think it’s fair to say that you and I have common enemies.” She wouldn’t be drawn any more. “I’ve been on your trail since Ingleton. It has taken me almost two years to find you.”

  “Two years! But I’ve only been away a few days at most.”

  “Time passes at different rates in different dreams,” was all she would say.

  “When shall we go?”

  “Let’s give Herr Schnooke what he needs. I don’t know how quickly they will be able to pay him or how swiftly he’ll perform once paid. He’s working on some sort of rain spell and a creature made of water which will set our friends free. Even if he’s not entirely successful, his sorcery will create a diversion. Meanwhile we must be on our guard. The Sebastocrater’s men could return at any time.”

  With some anxiety, though fairly convinced that the dreamthief’s daughter knew what she was about, I settled down to wait.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE SEBASTOCRATER’S SOLDIERS came back to Raspazian Square in the early light. Still wearing their garlic necklaces, as if they expected a vampire attack at any moment, they emerged from the surrounding alleys.

  They didn’t attempt to enter the tavern but remained on the outskirts of the square, looking this way and that, gesturing in alarm towards the mobsmen who approached them. The guards were stern but scarcely belligerent. The old lack of aggression between the Shallow and the Deep Cities, which all had taken for granted, was still there. Even the arrival of Klosterheim and von Minct had failed to drive serious rifts between them. Oona and I were both puzzled by it.

  “They seem reluctant to be here,” she said. “What does this mean when neither side wishes to be at odds? Yet I am sure, if we went out there now, we’d immediately be clapped in irons and dragged off to prison!”

  “What have Klosterheim and von Minct told them?”

  “We must try to find out. If we can learn that, we’ll know better how to act. This is like playing three-dimensional chess, isn’t it?”

  At nightfall we slipped out into the back alleys and evaded the guards for a second time, but now, with Oona in the lead, we were soon back at the black marble palace, observing it from the shadows of the shrubbery and wondering how we might most easily gain entrance. Eventually she determined the weakest part of the wall and made a short huffing sound. “I’ll send the panther,” she said. “You first.” And she disappeared into the greenery. A moment later the panther, clearly always nearby at her command, appeared and crouched for me to jump onto her sleek back. Again we leaped the wall into the grounds but this time did not head for the ornamental summerhouse, where the frozen Kakatanawa still stood guard, but rather loped up a wide, white path towards the palace itself.

  The huge overhead lamp, apparently fired by naked electricity, created deeper and deeper shadows the closer we came to it. The blazing light was blocked by heavily and colorfully decorated stoneworks in the classical-oriental traditions of Byzantium. The deeper shadows were illuminated by flickering firebrands, which in turn created another layer of mobile shadows, suggesting to an overtired mind they might be populated by all kinds of g
uarding monsters. Once I had dismounted, the panther slipped away, and a few moments later I heard Oona whispering from the shrubbery. As she had expected, most of the Sebastocrater’s men were now in the Deep City. There remained only a skeleton guard.

  Very soon we were inside the palace, dodging from column to column, seeking out its ruler. We heard distant music. A few servants came and went, but they weren’t for a second suspicious. Only in the tall central halls, under a dome inset with gold, precious jewels and mosaic scenes, was there much activity.

  A concert was in progress. On his throne sat a slender young, golden-haired man, wearing a circlet of silver inset with diamonds and rubies. The musicians consisted of a harpist, a lute player, a flute player and a drummer. The music was stately and, though not to my taste, surprisingly modern in feel. I was distracted by it.

  Then suddenly Oona made a decision. With a bound she was at the young Sebastocrater’s side, her sword blade resting against his throat. The music stopped abruptly.

  Even I was surprised by this turn of events. Oona had said nothing of threatening the monarch’s life.

  The Sebastocrater’s response at seeing me was spectacular. He jumped up, surprising Oona and knocking her backwards. She barely held on to her sword. Then he, too, fell back again. He was clearly panicked by the sight of me and seemed hardly interested in Oona at all until he looked around and found that she had risen, rescabbarded her sword and now held on her drawn bowstring an arrow directed at his heart.

  His eyes darted from side to side, seeking his soldiers. He was breathing rapidly. I moved towards him, and he backed away as if in fear.

  “Please,” he said, “I beg you. I’ve done you no harm.”

  “Well, that’s a matter of opinion,” I said. He was incredibly good-looking in the typical Greek manner, with a long straight nose and bright blue eyes. “I want to know why you’ve imprisoned my friends and betrayed your ancient compact with the Deep City.”

  “For all our good,” he said. “Your friends are merely in quarantine. As you should be. At least until a cure is found.”

  “A cure?” repeated Oona and I in unison. “Cure for what?”

  “For the disease you bring with you from your world.”

  “Is this what Klosterheim and von Minct have told you?” Oona asked.

  “Doctor Klosterheim explained how the child carries a deadly plague, which has wiped out Frankfurt, Nürnberg and München and left other great German cities almost without a population, without enough living people to bury their own dead. All those in proximity to her have almost certainly been infected.” The Sebastocrater now had the air of a man who faced his own inevitable end. “It is irresponsible of you to bring her here.”

  “I’m not sick,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with me, and I haven’t made any other people sick. I haven’t even given my white rat my cold this year!”

  “They warned us you would say that. You have no signs of the plague yourself, but you have the power to infect others.”

  I remembered the stories of Typhoid Mary I’d heard from a radio program, and briefly wondered if perhaps I actually was the carrier of some deadly virus.

  “That’s nonsense,” said Oona briskly. “The child’s as healthy as I am. As healthy as Lobkowitz and Fromental, who saw her days ago. As healthy as Lord Renyard, for that matter.”

  “It would be irresponsible of me not to isolate them as I isolated your friends. This is an ancient city. I cannot have its citizens infected. That is why we had to act swiftly to occupy the Deep City. If we had not, who knows how swiftly the plague would have spread.”

  “Then why haven’t any of my friends at Raspazian’s been infected?” I asked. “Not one of them’s ill!”

  “It takes time to manifest itself.”

  “This is ridiculous,” said Oona. “You have allowed yourselves to be tricked and panicked by a couple of wicked men. They’re responsible for untold deaths. They will kill this child if they need to and are given the chance.”

  The Sebastocrater seemed only half-convinced. He looked back and forth from the bow-woman to me, to his subjects and musicians.

  “Doctor Klosterheim assured me…”

  “Doctor Klosterheim!” she snorted. “He is better qualified as a butcher than a doctor!”

  “What do you know of this great medical man? He risked his own life to warn us of our danger.”

  “Danger? From what?”

  At that moment two men had entered the hall and stopped in the flickering shadows cast by the flambeaux on the walls. I recognized them immediately. I could see more of von Minct’s heavy, handsome Germanic face, its cold blue eyes and thin lips. Dressed in black, he wore a steel breastplate. Beside him was gaunt, gloomy old “Doctor” Klosterheim, his eyes glistening in their deep sockets. He had a head like a fleshless skull, narrow and vicious. I would certainly never have taken them for a couple of heroes.

  “From that child.” Klosterheim raised one long, bony finger and pointed at me.

  “And how can a little girl offer you danger?” said Oona, settling the arrow on her bowstring.

  “She offers the whole world grievous danger.” Gaynor von Minct’s voice was brutal, coarse.

  “I wasn’t hurting anyone in Yorkshire.” I began to be annoyed. “I hadn’t hurt anyone in London. I was perfectly happy at home in Ingleton until you turned up and started laying siege to our house!”

  “Trying to avert the danger we foresaw,” broke in Klosterheim. “The plague which has wiped out half your country.”

  I was furious at these lies. “Plague? There was nothing wrong with England when I left.”

  “You poor girl. After that terrible destruction of Londres, your own grandparents were taken with the plague. Did you not know that?”

  A wave of horrified misery hit me. “What?” I looked at Oona.

  “That’s a foul lie, Prince Gaynor. How low you stoop! And for what gain?” Oona drew her arrow back on the bow as she prepared to shoot him.

  The Sebastocrater looked at me with some alarm and raised a kerchief smelling strongly of garlic to his face. Now I understood why the guards were wearing garlic necklaces. They thought garlic was a way of warding off the plague. And vampires, too, of course.

  I believed that Oona and my imprisoned friends would have told me if the story were true. “I’m perfectly healthy,” I said, “and so are my grandparents.”

  Oona, for reasons of her own, was grinning widely at the two villains. “They certainly are,” she said. “I can guarantee it.”

  The Sebastocrater frowned. “Who am I to believe? My responsibility is to the people of Mirenburg. Why would Doctor Klosterheim and Prince Gaynor von Minct have come to tell me such a terrible lie?”

  “I think they want to kidnap me,” I said. “They have already tried it once or twice. That’s why I’m so far from home—and so eager to get back there.”

  “Don’t perjure yourself,” mumured Klosterheim. “It’s not becoming in one so young.”

  “Agreed,” said Oona. “Though it’s a habit with you, Herr Klosterheim. You know me and you know my power. You seek what you think this girl possesses. I suspect you have the other half of your recipe already in your power. Fresh caught, eh? But half a spell is worse than none. Either way, the chances are, you’ll kill her.”

  The Sebastocrater’s handsome features clouded, and he ran his fingers through his golden curls. He didn’t like the thought of being responsible for my death.

  “I was already warned about them by my parents,” I said. “It’s true, your honor. They mean me no good.”

  “Yet they are so convincing.”

  “They are clever servants of the Master of Deceit himself,” said Oona. “They serve only the Prince of Lies.”

  “You lie, not I!” cried Klosterheim. But she had struck home.

  Oona threw back her head and laughed again. “Ah! Liar! Liar! You no longer know what is truth and what is falsehood!”

  “What
do you demand of me?” asked the Sebastocrater, rather more impressed.

  “Release my friends and my warriors, and we shall all leave Mirenburg,” promised Oona. “Save for LordRenyard, who will return to rule the Deep City by tradition, as he has always done.”

  “And if we should then have an epidemic?”

  “You will not. I have told you. Klosterheim and von Minct lie.”

  “Perhaps you merely wish to rescue your friends. The girl does not show plague. We did not say she did. We know she carries it.” Prince Gaynor stepped towards me. “Doctor Klosterheim has explained all this. He was physician to more than one royal court.”

  “And no doubt poisoned more than one round of royal cocoa,” I said, getting a glare of pure hatred from the “doctor” in question. “I’ve told you. He’s a liar.”

  “Yet you could be the liar.”

  Oona was getting pretty tired of this. She took her bowstring back another inch. “We have no motive. If you give this child up to Klosterheim and von Minct, you almost certainly sentence an innocent to a dreadful death.”

  I believed her and felt slightly faint. I stared at the two villains. They stared back. They didn’t seem to be denying anything. Klosterheim’s cold eyes were angry. Von Minct’s face was hidden again in the depths of his cloak.

  Were we at an impasse?

  The Sebastocrater sighed. “It would seem that if I quarantined the child, and you, too, fräulein, until such time as we are certain of the truth, I would be exercising my duty.”

  “And Klosterheim and von Minct?”

  “They, too, shall be quarantined.”

  Klosterheim hissed his disagreement with this decision, but he was unsure what to do next. They both glared at me. I felt like a steak being eyed by two famished men. I moved a little closer to Oona.

  “No,” I said, “there’s nothing wrong with me, and I should be getting home. My parents will be worrying.”

  “We’ll take you home,” growled Gaynor von Minct. Klosterheim drew a large pistol from within his cloak. “I believe this puts you all at a disadvantage,” he said.

  Von Minct also had a pistol. He cocked it with a heavy click.