The Road to Bedlam: Courts of the Feyre, Book 2 (31 page)

    "Your daughter's life is insufficient reason?"

    "Your threat is not sufficient reason. You still haven't told me precisely what peril she is in and what you have to do with it. For all I know it could be you that's threatening her."

    "I have sworn not to harm her. I can do no more."

    "We've had this conversation. I will tell Garvin what I need to tell him."

    "Very well, I see that in order for you to trust me, I must first trust you. It is good that one of us has some faith in his heart,"

    "Oh, I have plenty of faith in other people."

    He gave me a sour look, but then straightened his coat. "You already know the Ways, though I think you did not know them as well as you thought."

    "It was an enlightening experience, I'll admit that much."

    "Now I will show you something of the wraithkin, something your Warder brethren cannot show you."

    "If it's card tricks, I've seen them before."

    "You test my patience, Dogstar. You would scorn the magic you inherited. Your sarcasm reflects badly on you. You have respect for no one. It is no wonder my brothers and sisters will not harbour you."

    "That's not the reason, and we both know it."

    He stared at me. I did not look away. It was he who finally looked to the next hill across the valley. "See the copse atop the hill there."

    "I see it."

    "How long would it take you to get there?"

    "Walking?"

    "By whatever means."

    "Half an hour or an hour on foot, maybe. Less in a car, assuming you can get a car up there." The only road in sight wound along the bottom of the valley, but there might be side roads up the hillside, hidden in the shadow of the hill. "If there's a Way-point it would be quicker."

    "There is no Way-point nearby other than the one we arrived on. It is a closed end. That's why we are here. The only path from here is back where we came."

    "So what do you want me to do?"

    "Learn, Dogstar. Watch and learn."

    He stood, gazing across the valley. I sensed a creeping spread of power, enveloping and concealing, hiding us from view.

    "I can do that myself," I commented.

    A sudden chill fell on the hilltop, so sudden and distinct that it made me focus my attention on him. He was drawing in power, building a store of energy. The tips of my ears were suddenly cold and I wrapped my arms about me against the hard edge in the breeze.

    Around Raffmir flickering fingers of light formed a nimbus. It built until he was outlined in white fire. He glanced sideways at me, grinned, and then stepped forward.

    The light flashed and blinked out and it was a moment before I could see again. I was alone on the sunset hilltop.

    I looked about me, searching for where he had hidden himself and then realised the point of the demonstration. Shielding my eyes, I searched the treeline opposite. Against the dark woodland, there was a darker patch in the distance. The figure raised an arm and waved slowly. Even from there, I could tell he was grinning back at me.

    It was a grin that said, "I know something you don't."

    After a moment, I began to see a glow around him. He made no attempt to hide it this time, and even from a distance I could see the white fire dancing across his shoulders. There was a bright flash, and he was walking back across the grass towards me.

    "You will not allow it, but you are impressed."

    "It's a fine trick."

    "Do you always disparage that which you do not have? I find it tires me."

    "It helps me keep things in perspective."

    "I will give you free advice, cousin. If you stay that sour, the wind will change and you will stay that way. Learn to appreciate the things you are given and you will have a better time of it."

    "Never look a gift horse in the mouth."

    "Exactly so."

    "And yet, gift horses do have a knack of dropping dead at inconvenient moments, don't they?"

    "That cynical streak will give you ulcers. Now I want you to try. You may find it more difficult. The ground has cooled and it will be some time until it recovers. It will be possible, nevertheless."

    "You want me to do that."

    "You are wraithkin born, and gifted with power. Will you disappoint me?"

    "I'm not here to please you, Raffmir."

    "Nevertheless, it is a useful skill, is it not?"

    I had to admit, the ability to travel a distance in an instant might come in useful. "Show me."

    "Stand here. You need to see where you are going. Memory is not enough, you need to see your destination. If you can't see it, you can't go there."

    I felt his magic creep out around us, concealing us once more.

    "Focus on the distant point. Bring it closer with your eyes, if you can. What do you see between here and there?"

    "Nothing."

    "Yet there remains a distance between you. There is something. There is air, and space, and the distance between."

    "Of course."

    "But you are wraithkin. The space between is your space. The gaps between the gaps belong to you. If you concentrate, you can step around the distance. You can get from here to there without travelling in between."

    "How? I don't see…"

    "Don't see! Your sight is not to be trusted. It tells you lies. It says there is distance between here and there when there is merely a flimsy curtain with the world depicted upon it. Step behind that curtain and out again, do you see?"

    "I'm not seeing it."

    "More power; draw what you need. Use more than your eyes. Find the gaps, the cracks and crevices between the walls of the universe. Your sight tells you the world is solid. Your touch confirms the weight and texture of reality. But you are wraithkin. You have other senses. You can sense that the world is nowhere near as solid as it wants you to believe. It is thin and insubstantial. Push through."

    "Into what?"

    "Never mind what. Feel. Your element calls you as it calls all the wraithkin. Answer it and you will see."

    And I did see. As I gathered power into me, the world began to dim. The sense of a solid reality fell away and I began to perceive it as a construct layered on top of something else. It lost its density and its stiffness and became more flexible, more permeable.

    "Now. Focus on the hillside. Focus and step through."

    I looked across at the copse of trees. I saw through the space between, not across the valley, but through space itself. And I stepped.

    A blinding light flashed into my eyes. I raised my hand, but the light had already vanished. I was facing trees. The distant copse was in front of me, the leaves fluttering in the evening breeze. I turned and the valley stretched out beneath my feet. On the far side, a lone figure stood. There was no wave or acknowledgment. He simply watched.

    He was right, it was impressive. I stared across the valley. As the man in the museum had said earlier, you get naught for nowt round 'ere. The Feyre were like that. They understood the basic economics of favour and return, and Raffmir had just shown me something quite spectacular. There was real value in it, so what did he want in return? Across the valley, he did not move.

    I wrapped myself in misdirection, unwilling to be as open and obvious as he had been. Opening the well inside myself, I drew energy into me, letting it pull power from the surroundings. The light breeze acquired bite as the temperature fell. I lifted my hand to see filaments of white light drifting up my fingers, creating a tingling sensation and forming a corona around my hand. I let the power build, feeling a tension as the air and ground around me cooled.

    The world dimmed before me, the hill becoming a shadow hill, the valley obscured in the dusk-light. It made me feel that I would fall through the delicate membrane on which I stood. In that veiled light, I could see other shadows, a wrinkle in the substance of the hill, flimsy curtains in the air, shifting layers in the air. I wondered what they meant, and whether I was seeing distortions in the fabric of reality or if it was simply the way things were formed.

    Lifting my eyes, I saw that the sky had dimmed, taking on a twilight quality. The overcast clouds had faded, leaving a blue-grey mantle, prickled with faint stars. A sickly green-tinged moon lay close on the horizon. It was a world beneath the world, a level below or alongside, matched but subtly different.

    I reminded myself why I was here and focused upon the far hilltop. This time it was easier to slip behind the curtain of reality and re-emerge on the far side. There was no rush. I didn't feel flung across space as I did on the Way. It was only a step. Raffmir waited patiently, his gaze focused far out where the purple hills merged with the grey cloud.

    "You're right. It is impressive."

    "What? No word of thanks? No gratitude?"

    "Tell me first what you would have in return. There is something, isn't there?"

    "I offer you my assurances. I would ask nothing from you that you would not give, and gladly. There, that is generous, is it not?"

    I smiled wryly and shook my head. "I have no idea, Raffmir. But I will wait to offer my thanks until I know what it is you want in return."

    "I desire only your trust, and your silence. The time will come soon enough when you will have to choose and it is never an easy choice between love and honour. I do not envy you."

    "Tell me why I must choose, then."

    "I offer you gifts and your first response is to ask for more. Your gratitude knows its bounds, cousin. But it must wait in turn, like all else. We cannot reach the end without passing through the middle."

    "I thought that's what we just did," I said, looking back across this valley.

    "A bad analogy. I have shown good faith and more besides. It is enough for one day. Come, I will return you to your seaside banishment."

    I followed him across the ragged grass to the Waynode.

    "Follow closely, and this time, try to exhibit some style."

    He stepped on to the Way-node and swirled away without pausing. I followed close behind. We slingshotted around the first node and away towards the second, but instead of following him onward, I entered the node and arrived, wrapping myself in concealment. It was another high hilltop, somewhere in the Welsh borders, maybe.

    Reorienting myself, I stepped quickly away, taking a side route away from his path. I had other plans and they did not include having Raffmir shadow me wherever I went. The next node-point was a barrow mound in a meadow, open to the sky, the smell of wet grass rich in the summer air. I diverted again. He would wait a little while for me to follow and then, perhaps, retrace our journey. If he tried to follow me, I wanted to make it as difficult as possible.

    This time, I used his technique of skipping across the nodes and using their momentum to accelerate out again, making the most of the momentum and maximising the distance. There was no time to consult the codex, but I had a vague idea of direction and I used the node-points to guess my route. Nevertheless, I took a couple of unintentional wild detours, unable to quite control the helter-skelter freefall. I hoped that would only make me harder to follow.

    I ended up in a woodland clearing, the steady drone of cars indicating some main route close by. I moved out of the clearing quickly, using a fallen branch to brush across my footprints, heading towards the road. It was afternoon, but I was counting on the midsummer daylight lasting late into the evening. It would be bright enough to be seen on the road for a while yet.

    I'd hitched rides as a student. Before I'd learned to drive or had the money for a car, I'd stood on motorway junctions with a cardboard sign hoping for lifts. I knew the roads around Kent and the south-east fairly well. Sometimes my patience was rewarded, but often lifts were a short distance only or not quite in the right direction. I had been marooned on deserted junctions in appalling weather, so the sound of the busy road was encouraging. I tramped out of the woods on to a fourlane road with fast-moving cars.

    The traffic was moving too quickly where I emerged, so I walked along the grass verge, keeping the traffic on my right so that I would head vaguely southwards. The cars and trucks rushed past, buffeting me as they passed. I knew that drivers were unlikely to stop unless they could get a good look at you as they went by and there was somewhere safe to stop. If I was lucky, one of them would decide I wasn't a drunk or a weirdo and pick me up.

    After fifteen minutes' walking I came to a large roundabout. I had done better than I thought and had come out on the A5 somewhere south-east of Ashbourne. There was no sign of anyone following me, but I guessed that if Raffmir wanted to follow me without being seen then he could manage that. I stood on the hard shoulder, close enough to be seen by cars coming off the roundabout but not so close that they would be unable to stop without the car behind rear-ending them.

    I took the first lift offered, which may not have been a good idea. The truck driver was Polish and grinned insanely the whole time. His truck cabin looked and smelled as if he lived in it. After twenty minutes of trying to get me to talk about football, which I neither knew nor cared about, he put the stereo on and filled the cab with thrash metal. We stopped at a set of lights just outside Derby and he passed over a pack of tablets. The writing on the foil was obscure, presumably Polish; it certainly wasn't English.

    "You like, yes?" he asked me.

    "I don't think so, no."

    "Is caffeine, with spike for the head." He tapped the side of his temple and nodded knowingly.