Faerie Lord

Ninety

Henry led from the middle, carrying his torch. The charno plodded after him, surprisingly quietly for a beast of its size, although the clicking of its claws on the rock floor was a bit of a distraction. Lorquin went ahead of them both, sniffing the air in an irritating manner.

‘What are you doing that for?’ Henry asked eventually.

‘Smelling the trail, En Ri,’ Lorquin explained.

Henry frowned. ‘You never did that before.’ Lorquin had taken him all over the desert, but it was all eyesight work: he had followed subtle signs.

‘It is not possible in the open,’ Lorquin said. ‘The wind carries off the scent, the sun burns it up. But inside is different. Scent lingers.’

Henry stopped. This was an interesting development and might be an important one. ‘What can you tell?’

Lorquin gave a small but eloquent shrug. ‘Several people have passed this way before. Two men together, but that was some time ago. And with them something strange I have not smelled before. Then -’

‘What sort of something strange?’ Henry interrupted. ‘An animal?’

‘Perhaps,’ Lorquin said, ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Go on,’ Henry urged. ‘What else?’

‘Yes, what else?’ said the charno, leaning over Henry’s shoulder.

‘More recently a woman; a young woman. She -’

Blue! It had to be Blue! How many more young women would you get wandering down here? ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ Henry exploded.

‘You asked me of other things, En Ri,’ Lorquin said mildly.

‘I want you to follow the woman’s scent,’ Henry said firmly in his leadership capacity. ‘That’s the one I want you to follow. You can forget about the others.’

‘That was the one I have been following,’ Lorquin said, ‘I thought it might be Blue, the woman you seek.’

‘Did she meet up with the others?’ the charno asked. Which was a very sensible question and Henry wished he’d thought of asking it.

Lorquin shook his head. ‘The trails are overlaid. If they met together, I have not found the place yet.’

‘Keep going,’ Henry told him.

Several minutes later, Henry said suddenly, ‘We’re going back the way we came.’

‘As did she,’ Lorquin said, ‘I can follow the scent only where it takes me.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Henry muttered.

‘He can follow the scent only where it takes him,’ echoed the charno.

‘Shut up, said Henry. The truth of it was he was feeling hugely uncomfortable. He wasn’t cut out for this. Lorquin, for all he was so young, was better equipped as a hero than Henry. He could follow trails, survive in the desert, find food when it was needed, kill draugrs… Even the charno would make a better hero than Henry. At least it could lift the hammer. But Henry was the one who was supposed to rescue Blue. And from what? He really had no idea what he was getting into. The Midgard Serpent business sounded like nonsense. Some sort of tribal superstition. How could Blue have gotten herself involved with a giant snake? Except that everybody else seemed to take the idea seriously. An idea occurred to him and he said quickly, ‘Lorquin. I don’t suppose you can smell this Midgard thing?’

‘The whole place reeks of it,’ said Lorquin. He gave Henry a curious little smile. ‘But we have not found the way to reach it yet.’

They set off again and, to Henry’s intense irritation, the charno began to hum a little tune.

The scent trail led them to several dead ends where they were forced to backtrack. ‘She could go no further,’ Lorquin explained. But one blank passage proved different from the others. ‘She went through here,’ Lorquin said, frowning.

‘She can’t have – it’s a dead end,’ Henry said unnecessarily.

‘Nonetheless, she went through here,’ Lorquin said again. He moved forward to examine the rock face.

Henry moved forward with him. ‘You mean there’s been a rock fall or something?’ It didn’t look like a rock fall.

‘There was no rock fall,’ Lorquin confirmed. ‘Yet she is in a cavern beyond this passage and she reached it through here.’

‘How do you know -?’ Henry began, then stopped himself. It didn’t matter. If Lorquin said that’s where Blue was, Henry believed it. He ran one hand over the cold surface of the rock. ‘How do we reach her?’ he asked instead.

‘We have to find another way,’ said Lorquin calmly and made off back down the passage.

It took him the better part of an hour, during which they searched through tunnels, passages, galleries, caves and caverns. Eventually he took several steps into a high-roofed, open passageway, then stopped and announced, ‘This will take us to the cavern where they hold the girl.’ He looked at Henry expectantly.

Lorquin expected him to tell them what to do and Henry didn’t know. His heart was beating too fast and though it was cold here underground, beads of sweat had broken on his forehead. He licked his lips with a tongue that had suddenly gone dry. ‘What happens if this passage is closed off at the end like the others?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘It isn’t,’ Lorquin said. ‘The scents are too strong.’

‘Scents?’ Henry asked. ‘There are more than one?’

For the first time since they met, Lorquin looked fleetingly impatient. ‘The serpent and the girl you seek and – ’ He hesitated.

‘And…?’ Henry echoed.

Lorquin frowned. ‘There is one other and something beyond, but they are strange smells. One keeps changing.’

‘Changing?’ Henry echoed, a little wildly.

‘If you don’t hurry up, the serpent will have eaten her,’ the charno remarked dourly.

Dour or not, the creature was right. Henry was fiddling about, acting the maggot, wasting time when Blue was probably in mortal danger. Pyrgus would have been better at this. Anybody would have been better at this. But there wasn’t anybody. This one was all down to Henry. An odd thought occurred to him, he was about to meet his draugr.

Without another word, he pushed past Lorquin and trotted down the passage, torch held high.