Faerie Lord

Fifty

The Arcond of Hass-Verbim, an old friend of Blue’s father, insisted on a banquet and sat beaming as course after exotic course was delivered to the table by a herd of liveried stumpies. Blue worked hard to curb her impatience. She desperately wanted to move on, to cross into Buthner, to find Henry and bring him back safely. But the diplomatic niceties had to be observed, and besides, even if they were in Buthner this very second, she had no idea where to look for Henry, let alone find him.

Pyrgus was feeling impatient as well. He had that distant look he got sometimes, was taking very little part in the conversation and only picking at his food. Madame Cardui was doing rather better. She was seated on the Arcond’s left and, rather to Blue’s relief, was claiming most of his attention.

‘Dreadful place,’ the Arcond was saying in response to her question about Buthner. ‘I can’t imagine why you want to go there. Most of it, quite frankly, is wilderness. Desert, really. Hideously hot. There are a few shanty towns round the edges, no central government at all – just local warlords who control their own regions and fight among one another. And the people… oh, my dear, the people!’

‘Dreadful too?’ asked Madame Cardui with a half smile.

The Arcond relaxed back in his chair. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t be too hard on them. They’re just trying to survive, after all. You’ll find porters at almost all of the border crossings. They’ll pilfer anything they can from your luggage, but most of them won’t try to kill you. You need to keep out of the shanty towns unless you have an armed guard, and a substantial one at that. I notice…’ He trailed off diplomatically.

‘No entourage,’ Madame Cardui confirmed. ‘No guards, no servants. We are travelling, shall we say, incognito.’

‘How intriguing,’ said the Arcond. He glanced at Blue, then back again. ‘Well, doubtless you have your reasons. But if you plan to visit the townships, I would strongly suggest you permit me to provide you with an escort.’

‘I’m not sure we will be,’ Madame Cardui told him. ‘What can you tell me about the desert?’

Blue pricked up her ears at once. So far, both Pyrgus and Madame Cynthia had insisted they had no idea where to look for Henry. She could trust Pyrgus to tell her the truth – he was the worst liar in the world – but Madame Cardui’s life was devoted to secrets. She hid things almost by instinct. If she was interested in the Buthner desert, there was probably a reason.

‘Not a great deal,’ the Arcond was saying, ‘It takes up four-fifths of the country’s land surface. Several million square miles of… nothing really. Sand. A few water holes – one would hardly call them oases. The odd monastery. Scorpions. A scattering of undeads barrow wights, that sort of thing. The nomads call them vaettirs.’

‘Ah, so there are nomads?’ Madame Cardui asked.

‘Apparently,’ the Arcond said. ‘God alone knows how they manage to survive. Extremely primitive from what I hear. All sorts of stories about them. Cannibalism. Head hunting. Blood drinking. You wouldn’t really know what to believe. There’s something in their diet that turns them blue, skin and hair. All the information I have suggests the nomad tribes are even more dangerous than the townships, but they avoid normal people when they can, so the chances of you meeting them are slim, even if you go into the desert. You’re not planning to go into the desert, are you?’

‘Unlikely,’ said Madame Cardui blandly.

‘I’ll tell you something really interesting about Buthner,’ the Arcond said suddenly. ‘At one time – this is very many years ago: prehistory, I suppose you’d say – at one time, it housed what was probably the most advanced civilisation on the planet. We have an archaeological body here, the Verbim Institute -’ He smiled. ‘I’m Honorary Chairman and I contribute to the funding. The Institute has conducted several digs in the safer areas of Buthner and the evidence is quite extraordinary. It seems that Buthner – and parts of Hass-Verbim, of course; they weren’t separate countries in those days was the heart of an extensive empire.’ He half turned his head. ‘Much like your Empire is now, Blue.’

‘Really?’ Blue said politely.

It was clearly one of the Arcond’s enthusiasms, for he leaned forward to say, ‘Oh, yes. Very technically advanced on the evidence we have. Magical technology. I know some scholars don’t accept this, but I really do believe they may well have been more advanced than we are today.’

‘I thought there was a ban on the use of magic in Buthner,’ Madam Cardui put in. ‘Or is that just some local warlord?’

‘Oh no,’ said the Arcond. ‘You’re quite right, Cynthia. There is a huge distrust of magic in Buthner much more even than there is in my own country. In some areas you risk immediate execution if you’re found in possession of so much as a spell cone.’ He hesitated. ‘You’re not planning to take anything magical across the border, are you?’

‘No,’ said Madame Cardui without a moment’s hesitation.

The Arcond looked relieved. ‘Ah good.’ He smiled. ‘We wouldn’t want a diplomatic incident.’

‘Or an execution,’ Blue murmured quietly.

The Arcond obviously didn’t hear her, for he relaunched his monologue at once, ‘I have a theory – a personal theory, although it is borne out by the archaeological evidence – I have a theory that it was magic that caused the downfall of the old Buthner Empire and the dislike of magic today is a race memory dating back all the way to that event.’

‘Really?’ said Madame Cardui, injecting far more of a note of interest than Blue had managed earlier.

Blue said quietly, ‘Are you all right, Pyrgus?’

‘Oh, indeed,’ said the Arcond. ‘You see, there’s no reason for the desert. No geological reason. The desert is where the ruins are, where the main cities used to be, so clearly it wasn’t a desert then. And there wasn’t a general change in climate, otherwise Hass-Verbim would be a desert now as well. So how did a thriving, prosperous, urbanised community suddenly turn into a desert. It was sudden, you know. Our digs show that conclusively. What I -’

‘Pyrgus!’ Blue exclaimed in sudden alarm.

‘- believe is that some powerful magical operation, perhaps unimaginably more powerful than anything we might manage today, got out of hand. It may have been military, or something in the nature -’

‘What’s wrong, Blue deeah?’ Madame Cardui asked.

Blue was staring in horror at Pyrgus, seated almost opposite her across the table. His head was twisted to a peculiar angle that threw the sinews of his neck into sharp relief. His eyes were rolled back so that only the whites were showing and his whole body trembled like a leaf in a gale.

Madame Cardui stood up so quickly that her chair toppled backwards. ‘He’s in another bout of fever!’ she exclaimed.