I couldn’t even imagine the kind of agony he must be in, but his step was sure and certain as he descended from the dais to face me, and when he spoke, his voice never wavered once.
“I am the Herald,” he said, fixing me with his one golden eye. “Mab’s Herald. I speak for her to lesser things. And yes, I am being punished, for sins beyond your comprehension. Or appreciation. Still, it is good to have you here, Drood. It’s been so long since we had anything human to torment.”
I armoured up and took him out with one punch to the head. His skull broke audibly under the impact of my golden fist, and he sat suddenly down, as though someone had pulled the floor out from under him. Start as you mean to go on, I always say. The massed ranks of elves stirred again, and the four favourites hissed with rage, but Queen Mab raised one perfect hand and immediately all was still and silent again. The Herald rose slowly to his feet, the bones of his head creaking and cracking as they moved slowly back into place. Golden blood ran steadily down the side of his face and dripped off the lobe of his pointed ear. The blow would have killed anyone else, but elves are hard to kill. You couldn’t slow an elf down with a wrecking ball. Not in their own world.
“I am Edwin Drood,” I said flatly to Queen Mab, ignoring the Herald. “The Droods are bound to the Fae, and the Fae to the Droods, by ancient pact and treaty. Or have the elves forsaken honour?”
“The elves are honour,” said Queen Mab in a slow heavy voice like poisoned honey, as though she was half dreaming. “More than can ever be said for humankind. But be you welcome to our lands, Edwin Drood, and your companions. Do keep them under control. If they make a mess we’ll have them disciplined.”
“They’re with me,” I said. “And therefore protected by the Drood protocols.”
“Speak,” said Queen Mab, neither agreeing nor disagreeing for the moment.
“You did not inform us of your return, Your Majesty,” I said carefully. “We would have sent envoys to welcome you home.”
“We have returned,” said Queen Mab. “Let all the worlds tremble and all that live beware.”
“Well, yes,” I said. “Quite. So, what’s happened to Oberon and Titania?”
“Is that what you came here to ask, Drood?”
“No; just making conversation.”
“They are gone. Mention them not in our presence.”
“All right,” I said. “Where have you been, Your Majesty? You’ve been gone a long time.”
“Oberon sent us away.” Her dark red mouth widened slowly in a terrible smile. She had the look of the Devil contemplating a new sin. “He really should have had us killed, but he always was too sentimental for his own good. It took us a long time to claw our way back and take our long-anticipated revenges on all those who betrayed us . . .”
“Where did he send you?” I said, honestly interested. “Where could he send someone of your undoubted power?”
“Where all the bad things go, little Drood. He sent us to Hell. Damned us to the Pit, to endure the eternal Inferno.” She was still smiling her awful smile, her golden eyes fixed on me. And even inside my impenetrable armour, I could feel beads of sweat popping out on my forehead. “While we were in Hell, little Drood, during our long sojourn in the Houses of Pain, we met your precious witch, Molly Metcalf. Such a sweet little thing. Shall we inform you of the deals she made, of all the awful things she agreed to, in return for power?”
“Let us make a deal, Your Majesty,” I said. “I will not talk of Oberon and Titania, and you will not talk of my Molly. Yes?”
“Speak, little Drood,” said Queen Mab. “Tell us what brings you here to our recovered court, to our noble presence. Tell us what brings you here with the blood of so many of our noble cousins still wet and dripping on your armoured hands.”
“Ah,” I said. “I wondered when we’d get around to that. They attacked me, Your Majesty. They really should have known better. I might have been rogue at the time, but I was still a Drood, and they were just elves. Even if they had been armed with strange matter by a traitor within my family.”
Peaseblossom hissed loudly and started to rise up again. Queen Mab shot him a glance, and he flinched and fell back as though he’d been hit.
“Keep your pets on a leash, Your Majesty,” I said. “Or I might find it necessary to discipline them.”
The Queen considered me silently for an uncomfortably long moment. There was no sound in the Unseeli Court apart from the heavy breathing of my companions. I should have been able to hear the massed breathing of the thousands of watching elves, but there was nothing. I didn’t look back, but I knew they were still blocking the only way out, and it was highly unlikely they’d step aside for me again without Mab’s command. Unless I won the argument with the Queen, got the information I needed, and struck some kind of deal that would get me and my companions out of here with our organs still on the inside. The odds were not good, but I’m a Drood, and when you wear the golden armour, the odds do what they’re told, if they know what’s good for them. In the end Queen Mab nodded very slightly, and I felt a great weight rise off me. She was ready to listen, at least.
“I’m here about the USS Eldridge,” I said. “An American naval vessel that found its way here in 1943. You weren’t on the Ivory Throne at the time, Your Majesty, but I’ll bet the Herald was around back then. I need to know what happened to this ship; how it was able to come here and what happened to it while it was here.”
Queen Mab turned her great head slowly to look at the Herald, who bowed low in return.
“I do indeed remember the occasion, Your Majesty. Would it please you to have me tell of it?”
“Show them,” said Queen Mab.
The Herald clenched his left hand into a fist. Razor-sharp thorns burst out the back of his hand. Golden blood splashed onto the floor before him, quickly spreading out to form a golden scrying pool. And in that pool appeared images from the past, showing all that had befallen the unfortunate USS Eldridge.
“Your world was at war,” whispered the Herald, his golden eyes fixed on the images forming in the scrying pool. “Its very boundaries weakened by the sheer extent of the savagery and slaughter. So when one of your ships came knocking at our door, we were tempted and let it in. Such cunning machines in that ship: primitive but effective. They pushed open a doorway we had long forgotten, and all we had to do was help them through. I wonder where they thought they were going . . . A warship, yes, but small and pitiful compared to our glorious vessels. They came right to us, not knowing where they were or the danger they were in.
“We played with them for ages, teasing and tormenting as the impulse took us, delighting in their pain and horror. They cried so prettily. And then it occurred to us what a fine jest it would be to alter the ship and its crew in subtle, deadly ways and send them home again. To corrupt them body and soul and send them back to your world as a spiritual plague ship . . . We debated for hours, searching for something especially sweet and cruel and amusing . . . but that delay gave the crew of the ship time to recover. The Eldridge’s captain took control again, roused his crew, and had them reactivate their cunning machines. They forced the door open again and fled our shores in search of it. See and know what happened next . . .”
The images were clear and sharp in the scrying pool. The USS Eldridge was heading out to sea. Their decks were slick and running with blood and shit and other things, but the sailors ran frantically back and forth, leaping over dead and mutilated bodies where necessary while the captain screamed orders from the bridge. There were still enough of the crew left alive to do the work, though their faces were racked with memories of pain and rage and horror. On the bridge, the captain stared straight ahead with sunken dark eyes like cinders coughed up out of Hell.
Strange energies began to glow and crackle around the Eldridge as the powerful machinery packed into the compartments below began to operate. And that was when the elves attacked.
Huge three-masted sailing ships surged out after
the Eldridge and soon overtook it, though there was scarcely wind enough to stir the massive sails. They circled lazily around the Eldridge, taunting the ship and its crew until the sailors manned the deck guns and opened fire. The cold iron of their ammunition punched through the sliver-thin hulls and made ragged messes of the spread sails. Elves danced and shimmered on their decks, moving too fast to be hit but unable to stay still long enough to operate their weapons. The Eldridge kept up a steady fire, blowing the elven ships apart inch by inch.
The elven vessels fell back, raging and frustrated, and the Eldridge sailed on.
Elf lords and ladies laughed merrily high in the sky, mounted on the back of a dragon. Not the ugly wyrms they’d been forced to use on Earth, but the real thing. Impossibly large, it hovered over the Eldridge like an eagle over its prey. The ship’s guns fired but could not touch it. The dragon opened its great mouth, and raging streams of liquid fire washed over the decks of the Eldridge, consuming sailors, blowing up guns and ammunition, and scorching the metalwork. The elves on the dragon’s back unlimbered strange unearthly weapons and blew great holes in the Eldridge’s superstructure. Sailors died in the hundreds, but some still manned the deck guns or fired up at the dragon with rifles or handguns.
The captain kept his ship going, heading right into the heat of the attack even as his bridge disintegrated about him, heading doggedly towards the door he knew had to be there, the door that would take his ship and his remaining crew home. A door out of the Hell he had brought them to. Even as his ship fell apart around him and his deck burned with dragonfire, even as his skin blistered and blackened, the captain battled on.
Until the green mists rose, and he headed the Eldridge into them, and the ship disappeared. Safe at last from elven rage and spite. My heart went out to the captain. He had no way of knowing that just getting home would not be enough. That his ship’s marvellous new equipment had been damaged or perhaps even sabotaged. That he would return home not in triumph but only to more horror. Because the Eldridge had been through Hell, and it had left its mark upon them all.
The final images faded from the scrying pool, and it was just golden blood upon the floor.
“We let them go, in the end,” said the Herald. “Their machineries were . . . interesting, but they could never have left our lands without our help and consent.”
“Why?” said Honey. Her voice was strained, hoarse. “After all you did to them, and planned to do, why . . . ?”
“They fought well,” said the Herald. “We admire courage. And by letting them pass through the gateway again, their science and our magic combined to do what neither could do alone: force it all the way open. An unsuspected back door into your world. We thought it might be useful someday.”
“You bastards,” said Honey.
“Easy,” murmured Walker.
“No!” said Honey. “Those were good men, doing their duty in a righteous war, and you—”
“Hush,” I said. “Hush.”
“We have given you what you required, little Drood,” said Queen Mab, entirely unaffected by Honey’s outburst. “Now you must give us what we require. Give us the Blue Fairy’s torc. It was not on his body when he returned to us, and it is ours by right.”
“He stole that torc from its rightful owner, nearly killing him in the process,” I said.
“What is that, to us?” said Queen Mab.
“Torcs belong to Droods and no one else,” I said. “That was true before you were sent away, and it’s still true now.”
“Such a childish attitude,” said Queen Mab, smiling lazily. “To have such pretty toys and to refuse to share them. Well, those who will not play nicely with others must be punished, for their own good. Do you really think you can defy me, little Drood?”
“Thought I’d give it a bloody good try,” I said.
“We have you,” said Queen Mab. “And so we have your torc, as well as his. You can either present them to us of your own free will and know our gratitude, or we will take them from your broken body. And from these torcs we shall learn to make more. Enough to equip an army of elves. And then we shall lead our people home, back through the unsuspected door . . . and take back what was ours from the treacherous little creatures who currently infest it. There shall be blood and horror and killing beyond your capacity to imagine, little Drood. And all because of you; because you came here and brought us what we need—”
She broke off because I was laughing at her. “Not going to happen,” I said cheerfully. “The source that powers our torcs and our armour resides with the Droods and answers only to us. It likes us. It would never work for such as you. It has much better taste than that.”
“Just a suggestion,” murmured Walker. “Let’s not antagonise the incredibly powerful and psychotic Queen of all the Elves.”
“Hell with that,” I said, glaring up at the Queen. “Listen to me, Mab. No one threatens humanity and gets away with it as long as the Droods still stand. And we do still stand, despite all the years you’ve been away. Now, you can apologise to me, or I can drag you right off that throne and make you kneel to me. Your choice.”
“You underestimate us, little Drood,” Queen Mab said calmly. “Your small and limited kind always did. There is nothing our sciences and magics cannot duplicate, given time. And we have nothing but time. Whatever your source is, we shall bind it to our will and make it ours. Still, it was good of you to confirm the existence of this source, separate and distinct from the dreaded Droods. We had reason to suspect its nature but no proof, until now. Makes our planning so much easier. For, after all, if we have this source, what do we need the Droods for?”
“Any weapon is only as good as the one who wields it,” I said. “It’s not the armour but who’s inside it.”
“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” said Queen Mab. “Now, inform us of the true nature and extent of this source.”
“I don’t think so. That’s Drood business.”
“That we shall take first the truth, and then the torcs, from your screaming shell,” said Queen Mab. “We shall have such fun, tearing the secrets from you and breaking your spirit, bit by bit.”
“You proceed from a false assumption, Your Majesty,” said Honey. I was so caught up in the moment I’d actually forgotten she and the others were with me, and it made me feel a little better to know I wasn’t alone in this.
“You tell her, Honey,” I said, hoping she could buy me time to think of something. Anything.
“You would not like the Earth as it is these days, Your Majesty,” Honey said smoothly. “You wouldn’t recognise the old place after all we’ve done to it. It’s very . . . normal now. Very sane and reasonable. All science, with magic forced into the shadows and the nooks and crannies. The Earth has changed and evolved, just like humanity. Whereas you and your people, Your Majesty, haven’t. There’s no place for you in our world anymore. You’re better off here. Really.”
“Speak again, little thing, and we will change you into something amusing,” said Queen Mab. “We speak only to the Drood, and only then because his family is bound to us, and us to them.”
“And because you’re still afraid of my family,” I said. “That hasn’t changed. Stay here, Mab. Where you’re safe.”
She leaned suddenly forward, a movement as unexpected as a statue bending in two. Her great head came down to glare at me, and it was all I could do to keep from falling back. Up close, her golden eyes blazed like the sun.
“You killed my Blue,” she said in a voice soft and implacable as death. “He wasn’t much. A half-breed, born of taboo. But he had courage, and we liked his style. The only elf ever to trick his way into the stronghold of my enemy the Droods, win their trust, and steal a torc. Not for himself, but for us. That we might return in glory again. We would have raised him high in our regard, forgetting the taint in his blood . . . But he insisted on going back alone to your world to play one last game. We couldn’t say no. It meant so much to him, to prove his wort
h in your world as well as ours. And you killed him for it.”
“I didn’t kill him,” I said. “I was his friend. A real friend; not like you. I valued him for who he was, not for what he could bring to the table. I sent you back his body as a sign of respect. To him, as well as to you.”
“Not good enough, elf killer. There are so many other dead. Elf lords and ladies in good standing with this court, dead by your hand, lost to your unnatural Drood weapons. Did you even bother to learn the names of those you killed? They had noble names and mighty lineages; their lives and deeds and accomplishments were the things of legend. And you murdered them. Their spilled blood calls out for revenge, and we are minded to have it.”
I deliberately turned my back on her and looked over the ranks of elves lined up behind me. They all had some kind of weapon in their hands, and every single one of them was smiling, anticipating suffering and slaughter: food and drink to elven kind. An old story, where elves and humans were concerned, but unfortunately for them, I wasn’t playing by the old rules. Honey stepped away to give herself room to work. The shimmering crystal weapon was back in her hands. Walker leaned casually on his umbrella, beaming happily about him, apparently completely unconcerned, as though he knew something no one else did. And perhaps he did; this was Walker, after all. And Peter King . . . was looking at me. He didn’t seem especially concerned or scared, just interested to see what I was going to do.
I looked back at Queen Mab. “You’ve been gone so long, you’ve forgotten the first rule of the universe. Don’t mess with the Droods.”