Faerie Lord

Fifty-One

‘Quarantine!’ Blue fumed. ‘He has no right!’

‘He has every right,’ Madame Cardui told her. ‘You’d do exactly the same thing in his position. We’re lucky he didn’t include us in the order.’

‘He wouldn’t dare!’

‘I would,’ Madame Cardui said casually, ‘in his position. The temporal plague isn’t something to take lightly.’

‘But it doesn’t seem to be contagious! The quarantine is nonsense.’

Madame Cardui shrugged. ‘He doesn’t know that. Neither do we, for sure.’

They were sitting together in an antechamber of the hospital wing in the Arcond’s Palace. Through the window they could see Pyrgus, his bed encased in an isolation pod, locked in his feverish coma.

‘But how do we go on?’ Blue demanded. ‘How do we follow our plan?’ She was less focused than she sounded. Part of her desperately wanted to press ahead and try to rescue Henry, but another part of her, equally strong, wanted to look after Pyrgus. Staring at him now through the transparent coating of his pod, she was aware of an irrational dread that he would die like Mr Fogarty. As it was, he seemed to be growing older in the bed, although she knew that had to be an effect of her worried imagination.

‘I’m afraid our plan is already in ruins, my deeah,’ Madame Cardui said kindly. ‘From the moment Pyrgus fell ill again. With or without the quarantine, he can’t possibly travel. The future we are living now has deviated so much from what Alan foresaw that we must consider our original plans obsolete.’

Blue stared at her. ‘Are you saying we can no longer rescue Henry? Or stop the plague?’ she added as an afterthought.

‘I’m not saying that for a moment. But the situation has become much more difficult and we need to revise our approach.’

‘In what way?’

Madame Cardui sighed, ‘I wish I knew, deeah. The thing is, Alan foresaw a future in which Pyrgus and I travelled to Buthner and effected Henry’s rescue. That plan was modified when you joined us, deeah, but it still seemed largely viable. But clearly Pyrgus can no longer travel to Buthner. In fact, it seems to me that he needs to be translated to the Analogue World again as quickly as possible, otherwise we could have a real emergency on our hands. They don’t have the technology for that in Hass-Verbim. You know how suspicious of spells they are here – we’re lucky they have medical magic like isolation pods. So we need to get him back to the Realm with the minimum delay.’

‘Will the Arcond permit it?’ Blue asked anxiously.

‘The Arcond will be only too delighted to see the backs of us,’ Madame Cardui said. ‘The plague hasn’t reached Hass-Verbim yet, so the sooner he gets rid of us the better. We can transport Pyrgus, pod and all. I think you’ll find the Arcond will cooperate in every way possible.’

Still staring at her brother through the window, Blue said softly, ‘This will mean abandoning Henry…’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Madame Cardui.

Blue looked at her.

Madame Cardui said, ‘We can no longer follow our original plan, except in so far as we must assume Henry is still in Buthner. I would propose one of us returns with Pyrgus to the Realm, the other proceeds alone to Buthner.’

‘I’ll go to Buthner,’ Blue said quickly.

To her surprise, Madame Cardui voiced no objection, ‘I think you must, deeah. I’m much too old to be wandering in a desert, whereas I can be perfectly effective in having Pyrgus translated to the Analogue World. I believe it must be you who goes on and I believe you must go alone, although it pains me to expose you to the risk. But if you travel with guards, it will cut you off from contact with the natives, and I cannot imagine how you might find Henry without native cooperation. And a great deal of luck.’ She gave a bleak smile. ‘You must travel in disguise, of course – an attractive young woman alone is asking for trouble – but I expect you’ll enjoy that.’

Despite her worries, Blue smiled back, ‘I expect I will.’ In the days before she became Queen, she was notorious for disguising herself as a boy and visiting places she shouldn’t. The smile faded. ‘Madame Cynthia,’ she said soberly, ‘can you advise me where to start?’

‘In the desert, dahling,’ Madame Cardui told her promptly, ‘It’s the only part of Alan’s vision I believe to be still reliable. I appreciate the desert covers eighty per cent of Buthner, as our friend the Arcond mentioned, but I’m afraid it’s our only chance. I believe our best hope, our only hope now, will be for you to make contact with the desert nomads and persuade them to help you.’

‘That’s the blood-drinking, head-hunting, cannibal nomads?’ Blue asked flatly.

Madame Cardui smiled thinly. ‘I’m hoping those reports may be exaggerated, deeah,’ she said.