The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter (27 page)

“Just don’t hit the buildings,” Stephen cautioned.  “If the glass goes flying, the fairies won’t need magic to hurt us.”  He pulled his hood low over his face, tied his scarf around the rest, and hoped the cloth would protect him if the Jolly Executioner got a little too axe-happy.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Youngster and Craggy doing the same.  Letitia put her nose in the air and ignored them.  She caught them rolling their eyes at her, and went to unpack her horse, and send it on its way with a slap.  It could not follow them here.

The town of glass and rose petals was miniature at the end, small enough that the streets and alleyways between the houses were only just barely wide enough to permit feet wedged between them.  The company had to shuffle along slowly, carefully, to avoid scraping the sides of their boots against the houses.  Even so, Craggy once knocked his right foot against an overhanging roof.  The house didn’t shatter or shake at all, but it did slice a long tongue of leather from Craggy’s sole.  The leather and enchantments had protected him from worse damage—but barely.

Gradually, the town rose up around them.  Streets widened and houses grew past Stephen’s waist, past his chin, far above his head.  As the town grew, it also expanded in detail; the streets became wider and easier to walk along, but they also twisted and turned and ended abruptly.  Stephen thought that, were it not for the Jolly Executioner’s determined—if unexplained—sense of direction, they would have soon become hopelessly lost.  It was no longer clear in which direction the houses grew, and in which they shrank; so enormous were they that they all looked the same . . . and not only in size, but in shape and material.

“Here,” said the Jolly Executioner, pointing at a wall that stood in their path.  It was more than eighteen feet tall, opaque with clouded glass and thick with rose petals.  It also looked, to Stephen’s eyes, exactly like a dozen other walls in the immediate vicinity.

“Do we have to go through there?” Youngster asked.  “Isn’t there another way around?”

“No,” said the Jolly Executioner.  “Weren’t you paying attention?  A way around is what we’ve been looking for this past half-hour!  Our destination is through here, and through we must go.”

“But it’s a wall,” said Stephen, “and one we can’t possibly climb.  Even if it weren’t mortally sharp, it’s too high and smooth to allow easy passage.”

“We’re not climbing,” said the Jolly Executioner.  “Stand away and protect your faces.”  He adjusted his grip on his great iron battleax and swung.

Stephen felt a spray of glass hit his back, but he had been turned away, hands and head tucked, and was unhurt.  When the rain of falling glass had died down, Stephen straightened and turned around.

The wall was completely gone, and only the ground, littered with glass and rose petals, showed it had ever been there at all.  And beyond it—beyond it was Faerie, and it was springtime.  Stephen tiptoed gingerly forward, avoiding the worst of the fallen glass.

“You see?” boomed the Jolly Executioner.  “No paltry fairy enchantment or device can withstand the iron of my axe.”

The world shuddered beneath the Jolly Executioner’s voice, and Stephen realized that they had all been speaking in whispers, up to that point.  Weakened by the axe shattering their cornerstone wall, the houses to either side creaked and screamed and then, in one great whoosh, crumbled.

Stephen didn’t have to think; he was already running—running past the shattering glass, through the gusting rose petals, out of the street, over the shattered wall, and into Faerie beyond.  He kept running until the sound of glass shattering had died and then, slowly, his skin itching with a thousand tiny pricks, he turned and looked back.

The town was entirely gone.  Stretching as far as the eye could see, every house in the rose town had shattered, leaving behind inches and feet of finely crumbled glass and rose petals—the latter of which were cut to tiny red shreds by the former.

It was then that Stephen caught sight of the others.  They, too, had run when the town began to shatter, barely a step behind.  But there was something different about them, about their faces: their hoods were blown back, scarves torn and lying limp and the skin between the two was sparkling in the sun, as if doused in glitter.  As Stephen watched, he saw the sparkles slowly trickle away, leaving behind slender trails of blood.

It suddenly occurred to Stephen that his face hurt.  As did his arms.  As did every part of him.  He tore off a glove and felt his skin tear with it.  Tiny sparkles of glass poured from the glove and glittered on the ground.  Stephen touched one cheek and yelped, as glass dug into both cheek and finger.

Stephen tried to remember if he had inhaled while running.  Had he been too panicked, or was the glass now in his throat and lungs?  He could feel blood running through his nose, and parted his lips to breathe through his mouth.  His lips cracked and bled, but his tongue did not.  His eyes, likewise, had been protected by nearly closed lids.

He was safe.

“You fool!” Letitia screamed, turning on the Jolly Executioner.  The sparkles on her face and hair were lovely, and almost made her look like one of the Fair Folk—except for where they had fallen away and left tiny cuts behind.  “You fool!  What have you done?  Don’t you ever think?  Look at me!  Look at my hands!  I’d just finally gotten those healed, and then go yelling and slashing at glass buildings!” 

She thrust out her hands, which the witch’s salve had returned to smooth, pale skin—and which now glittered and bled.  “How are we going to get all this glass out without bleeding to death?  Haven’t you ever learned not to mess with fairy enchantments?  You’re so stupid—and your stupidity has killed us!”

“Keep your temper, witch,” the Jolly Executioner commanded hotly.  But there was something new in his voice.  If it had been any other man, Stephen might have called it fear.  “Remember that you are a member of this company only by my leave.”

“This company?  This company?  What company?  We are just four people nominally led by a madman, one who kills off more of his own people than the enemy does!  Tell me, leader: how do you plan to get us out of this one?  Or are you just going to insist we plod on until we fall down dead?”

“You’re the healer,” said the Jolly Executioner.  “Now that Medic is dead, it’s up to you to save us.”

“Mine!” Letitia shrieked.  “My job!  Your fault that we’re in this situation and my duty to fix it?  I think not!”

“I feel strange,” murmured Youngster, passing a hand over his brow and wincing.  Stephen could barely see his expression beneath all the blood, and the others were no better off.  “What’s happening to me?”

“You’re losing blood,” said Letitia.  “Lightheadedness is an early sign.  The last sign is death.”  Her face, too, was thickly coated with blood, blood that sparkled and glimmered in the sunshine, and flowed steadily downward.  “It won’t be long, now.”  She swayed gently on her feet, sharp then blurry, focused then unfocused.  Or was that Stephen?  Everything was swaying so vigorously, he couldn’t tell how much of it was from him, how much not.  Everything was weak and dizzy and dark.

In the court of the Fairy Queen

Where few mortal men have ever been.

Stephen awoke, and there was no pain.  His hands, when he held them before his eyes, blinking in the bright white light, were uncut, unscarred, and perfectly smooth—which Stephen knew they had not been, even before his foray into the town of glass.  Gingerly, he touched his face.  It, too, seemed unharmed.

Stephen sat up.  He was in a large room, lavishly furnished with deep, royal, and extremely expensive colors.  Not the sort of room in which one usually put enchanters. 

At one end of the room stood an enormous mirror, as wide as Stephen was tall, and reaching to the ceiling.  Its border was decorated in delicate gold filigree that seemed to twist and turn around itself.  Then Stephen forgot the designs, as he caught sight of his reflection.

His robes were clean and intact, and looked brand new—looked better than new; the material was finer and richer than anything that the Kingdom of Locklost would have mandated for its enchanters.  More than that, his own reflection looked whole and strong and glowing with health.  He ran a hand through his hair and it fell back, lush and trimmed and brushed.  The whole effect still looked like Stephen, but like a more real, more perfect, Stephen—like Stephen as he had always wished to look.  The discovery was both thrilling and disconcerting, and Stephen found it hard to look away.

This, he thought, is how I might look, were I part fairy.

Was it an illusion of the mirror?  No; he could feel it.  Could this be the outcome of smashing the glass town?  Had the glass somehow stripped away his outer shell, his scarred and imperfect self, leaving behind his essence, how he might have looked all along, were he not subjected to the grip of the world?

“Admiring yourself?” Youngster asked, opening the door.  Stephen started and spun around, only to find that Youngster had undergone a similar transformation, and stood there handsome and wholesome and looking younger than usual.

“What happened to us?” Stephen asked.  “Are the others like this also?”

Youngster nodded.  “You should see them,” he said.  “I wouldn’t have believed it possible.  Craggy’s hardly recognizable, without all his scars, and as for Letitia—she’s beautiful!  When I spoke with her, she was searching her closet for dresses and ribbons.  She laughed and joked when I asked her how she was, and seemed actually happy.  It’s strange.”

“It makes one wonder what Miss Ironfist would have done, given a pretty face and a room full of dresses.”

Youngster laughed and joined Stephen by the mirror, so they could both stare at themselves.  “It’s enough to make one vain,” Youngster noted.  “I feel like I could stand here for hours, staring at myself.”

Stephen nodded.  “Vaguely creepy, though.  It makes one wonder.”

“Yes.”

The door opened again, and an unfamiliar man opened.  He was definitely human, although as uncommonly handsome and healthy as Stephen and Youngster had lately become.  He was richly dressed in reds and purples, and heroically proportioned.  His hair was blond and wavy, his eyes blue, his chin square, his nose sharp.  For a moment, he reminded Stephen of Robin.

“Stop staring,” snapped the Jolly Executioner, “and follow me.”

Or was it Robin of whom the Jolly Executioner reminded Stephen?  There was something oddly familiar about his profile, but not reminiscent of something that recent.  Stephen felt like he’d been seeing that face all his life.

“What happened to your hood?” Stephen asked.  “Did they confiscate it?”

“Don’t flaunt your foolishness, Enchanter.  We are on a mission of diplomacy, and I would never be so rude as to wear a hood in the home of the Fairy Queen.  Besides, its purpose has passed.”  He said this so stiffly that Stephen decided the fairies probably had confiscated it, and stifled a laugh.

The Jolly Executioner’s glare was far less menacing, now that it was coming from handsome blue eyes rather than through a dire black executioner’s hood.  Stephen grinned back at him, and refused to be cowed.

Craggy and Letitia were waiting for them in a room larger and more lush than Stephen’s.  Letitia had brushed her hair down and twisted sparkly silver things into it, and had obviously spent significant quantities of time and patience perfecting her wardrobe.  Craggy, too, was well dressed and much improved, but his expression was the same as ever: silent and serious and slightly stupid.  He did not look happy or grateful, and frowned rather than smiled when he saw the change in Stephen.

“The Fairy Queen has granted us an audience,” announced the Jolly Executioner.  “She requests that all of us attend.  We are to go to her to show our gratitude; her people were the ones who brought us here and healed our wounds.  We will use this opportunity to convey to her the diplomatic wishes of Locklost.”

Craggy snorted.  The Jolly Executioner deftly ignored him.

“Chin up, Craggy,” said Stephen.  “You look much better healed; we all do.  Living on the road doesn’t do anyone any favors, and being cut up by glass fewer.”

Craggy shook his head.

“Oh, don’t bother talking to him about that,” said Letitia, too pleased with herself and her appearance to make the remark truly harsh.  “He isn’t properly appreciative—and has no eye for beauty.  Did you know, he said he thought I wasn’t pretty anymore?  The nerve!  I suppose some people can’t deal with perfection.”

“Pretty?  You aren’t just pretty—you’re more than pretty now!” said Youngster.  Then, faltering—“I mean, you always were, but now I can see it—in a ‘more so’ sort of way—emphasized.  That is—”

Letitia sniffed, and Youngster shut up.

“You said that you were going to use diplomacy,” said Stephen.  “Does that mean you’re going to change your plan?  I mean, she saved our lives, so she’s obviously willing to be diplomatic—”

“Diplomacy will be my initial attempt at settlement,” the Jolly Executioner agreed, “but I’m taking my axe with me.  They stole the rest of my weapons, but none dared touch the iron.  Be ready to back me and hold off the guards at my order.  I shall have no attention to spare them.”

Someone knocked gently on the door, and a moment later, a woman entered.  Unsurprisingly, she was beautiful.  Unnaturally beautiful.  Fantastically beautiful.  Stephen had seen beauty like that only three times before: the sultry beauty at his trial, the ferryman’s wife, and the boy’s mother in Robin’s Haven.

“Oh,” he said softly, thinking he understood, wishing he didn’t.  If there had been fairies in every town the company had entered, then the Fairy Queen had been tracking them from the start, and knew not only their path, but very probably also their intent.

No wonder she had known to save them from the glass and rose petal town.  No wonder they had been so swiftly recovered. 

He needed to warn the Jolly Executioner.

“The Queen will permit you to present yourselves to her now,” the fairy told them, her voice high and fluting and oddly familiar.

“Actually,” said Stephen, “if we could have just a moment, I’d really like—”

The Jolly Executioner glared at him before turning back to the fairy.  “We’d never keep Her Majesty waiting,” he said.  “We are not uncivilized ruffians.  Lead on.”

“But—”

“Silence, Enchanter!”

Stephen fell silent.  What else could he do?  He dare not blurt out his thoughts with the fairy present; he dared not warn the Jolly Executioner when that would be warning the fairies as well.

The fairy led them through opulent halls, which Stephen could never quite picture when he tried to recall them later.  There was the impression of splendor, and Stephen knew he’d never been anywhere half so magnificent.  But exactly what the splendor was, its exact details—that, he could not have said.

And then they arrived, and Stephen had eyes for nothing but the Fairy Queen.

There could be no doubt about who she was.  She was beautiful, in the way in which all fairies were beautiful, and yet she outshone them.  Beside her, their beauty felt dull and lifeless.  Her hair was red and flamed about her face; her skin was like ice; her eyes . . . her eyes. . . .

No one could have mistaken the Fairy Queen for human, not with eyes like that.  They were cold and cruel and lustrous green, without white or pupil, iridescent like the shell of a beetle.

What would the Fairy Queen look like without her fairy glamour? Stephen wondered.  Would she still be beautiful?  Was there some reason every part of her felt so stunningly beautiful, except those eyes?  Or had she purposely overlooked that detail?  Did she think it added to her charm?

And then the Fairy Queen met Stephen’s gaze, and he felt she knew exactly what he was thinking.  He had felt so handsome, looking in the mirror.  Now he knew that he was ugly, hideous, a disgusting worm next to the magnificent and lofty Fairy Queen.

Stephen bowed his head, ashamed.  Then his lips hardened.  I may not be as handsome as she, he thought, but I am human, and I have a soul, and that makes all the difference.

The Fairy Queen beckoned them nearer.  “Speak,” she commanded.

The Jolly Executioner stepped forward and bowed with a flourish.  “Your Majesty,” he began, “great Queen of all Faerie and fairy creatures, I am Prince Wilfred of Locklost, youngest son of—”

Wilfred? thought Stephen in disbelief.  Wilfred?  The Jolly Executioner’s name is Wilfred?  Could there be any name in the world less suitable?  And he is a prince?  And he has manners?  And he is the king’s son?

With tremendous effort, Stephen managed to close his gaping mouth.

Wilfred! 

“—and I have come here with this small but stout and noble company to—”

“To kill me,” the Fairy Queen inserted smoothly.  “Yes, I know.”  She lifted her left hand and withdrew something small and brownish—the Jolly Executioner’s talisman!

“How came you to have that?” the Jolly Executioner demanded.  “That’s mine!”

“It was retrieved for me by one of my forgotten spies.”

“It was stolen?  This is an outrage!  We come under the white flag of diplomacy!”

“In order to deceive me; yes, I know,” said the Fairy Queen.  She stood and Stephen saw that she was tall—taller than he, taller than the Jolly Executioner.  She glided closer to the company, until she was barely an arm’s length from the Jolly Executioner.  “You have brought iron into my kingdom, Prince of Locklost,” she said softly, “and that is something I cannot allow.  There is only one penalty for such an act.”

In a flash, the Jolly Executioner’s axe was in his hand.  “You cannot harm me or combat me with your foul magic while I hold this!” he announced.  “I come here on a desperate mission, and will see it fulfilled!  Release the land that is rightfully Locklost, or I shall release your head from your body!  Return the land, pay retribution, and humble yourself before our king!”

The Fairy Queen laughed.  “Return your land?  I have taken far more than you think.  You have been wandering in Faerie these past few days, hunting fairy animals, eating fairy food—and you did not even know it.”  She smiled then, a perfect smile over perfect teeth that did not reach her inhuman eyes.  “Here, so deep in my kingdom, do you really think you could hurt me?  Do you really have the temerity to try?  There are worse punishments than the one for which you are already doomed.”

The Jolly Executioner did not reply, and his expression did not change.  He simply drew back his axe and swung it in a smooth arc—

“Stop,” said the Fairy Queen.

—and stopped halfway, his muscles trembling with the effort of ceasing his momentum.

“You can’t do that!  I’m holding iron!”

“You,” replied the Fairy Queen, “are holding wood attached to iron.”  She raised one delicate forefinger and touched it to his forehead.