So vivid were these apparitions that it was some time before Quare became convinced a particular voice among the throng was real. Or at any rate so insistent that it compelled his attention away from all the others. Especially since it was accompanied by a stinging slap across his cheek. And then another.
‘Mr Quare! Can you hear me? Wake up!’
Quare attempted to focus his bleary gaze. Gradually the ghosts faded
from
view, until he found himself looking into fierce, dark eyes in a grey-masked and hooded face. His mouth worked to shape a name.
‘Drink this.’ A grey-gloved hand tipped a wooden mug to his lips. He drank the cool water, spluttering in his haste.
‘Easy.’ A strong hand slipped behind his head.
He swallowed until the mug was empty. Then spoke, his voice so faint as to be barely audible. ‘How …?’
‘Come on.’ The mug clattered to the floor. ‘We’re getting out of here.’
‘Can’t.’
‘I think you can.’
Quare found himself hauled to his feet. ‘No.’ He shook his head, trying to clear it. ‘Chained.’
‘Not any more.’
Sure enough, the cuff was gone from his ankle. Quare took a faltering step, then another, leaning heavily against his rescuer. He felt himself slipping back into his fever dreams and fought to remain anchored in the here and now. His tongue was swollen, his thoughts muddled, and his words slurred, but still he forced them out. ‘Aylesford. He’s got the hunter.’
‘Shh. Save your strength.’
‘We’ve got to stop him, Longinus. There’s no one else but us.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not Longinus.’ The rescuer reached up and pulled hood and mask aside. Blonde hair tumbled free.
‘You!’
It was the young woman from the rooftop. The false Grimalkin. Her expression was almost mischievous as she regarded him. The corners of her lips ticked upward in the hint of a smile. Then, compounding his shock, she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his.
The result of this kiss was even more astonishing than the fact of it. Blessed coolness radiated out from the touch of her lips, and Quare felt his fever retreat before it, all the way to the end of his arm, where it pulsed distantly.
The woman pulled away. ‘Better?’
He was – so much so, in fact, that whereas mere seconds ago it was the struggle of marshalling his sluggish thoughts into speech that had
impeded
him, now it was the rapidity of thought that made articulation difficult. ‘I … How …’
She laughed. ‘You may ask as many questions as you like – only not here. Not now. My kiss is no cure – you require more help than I can give. We must away, before your captors return.’
‘But … who are you? How did you know to find me here?’
‘You called, and so I came, as was promised.’
But he hadn’t called her. The only one he’d called was …
‘My God. Tiamet?’
‘You may call me that if you like,’ she said with a smile and a sly sideways glance, as if enjoying his befuddlement.
Quare’s questions – of which he had many – were brushed aside by this self-assured if not imperious young woman who went by the name of a dragon. She led him out of the cell and into a narrow, torchlit corridor extending in one direction only. They followed it, coming to a room whose sole occupant – the turnkey, Quare assumed – lay dead or unconscious upon the floor.
‘How did you get in here?’ he asked.
‘The same way we are getting out.’
‘But why did you not come sooner? I could have used your help that night at the Pig and Rooster, and many times since then.’
‘I am sorry,’ she said, wincing as if at a painful memory. ‘I was unavoidably … detained. But no more questions, Mr Quare – in fact, it would be best if you not talk at all. The Morecockneyans have sharp ears, among other things.’ She accompanied her words with a gesture, as if flicking away an insect, and Quare felt – as he had before – the sovereign weight of an implacable will descend upon him, sealing his lips. ‘Stay close,’ she whispered, pulling her hood and mask back into place so that she was once again, to all outward appearances, Grimalkin. ‘Stay quiet.’
She had given him no choice but to obey, yet he did so gladly, eager to be gone. He could tell that time was short, not only because it seemed certain that his escape would be noticed, or, even if it were not, that they would encounter one or more Morecockneyans along the way to wherever it was they were going, and so raise a general alarum, but
also
because he could feel the hot tingle of his banished fever creeping back up his arm. It would break upon him again, and sooner rather than later. He did not want to be here when that happened.
Leaving the room behind, Tiamat led him with utter assurance through a maze of passages that would have left Quare baffled had he been forced to navigate them on his own. The most he could say was that they seemed to be descending rather than climbing towards the surface. But it was plain that Tiamat knew where she was going. Equally if not more amazing was the fact that, once out of the room, she moved with confidence not only through the spaces lit intermittently by torches but through longer stretches that were sunk in near-darkness, illuminated only by phosphorescent spores of the sort with which the Morecockneyans dusted their bodies. The vial that Longinus had given to Quare was gone, no doubt taken from him along with his weapons, and lacking it he felt all the more dependent on his guide. He stuck to her like a shadow.
From time to time as they descended, Tiamat would halt, or backtrack, or pull him into a side passage – all in response to some warning signal he had not heard or seen. Twice groups of Morecockneyans walked by their hiding place, talking and laughing among themselves as if they were strolling down any busy London thoroughfare, and once a silent, armed patrol stalked past, glowing like grim spectres. More than once Quare reproached himself for not having thought to take a weapon from the turnkey, though in his present condition, weak as he was, and with the fever flowing back inch by inch, already beginning to cloud his thoughts again, he doubted that he would be much good in a fight.
At last, after what might have been hours, the sound of a great hunting horn reverberated from behind them, its urgent echoes multiplying even as the blast was repeated again and yet again. Quare knew then what the fox must feel.
‘Pity,’ Tiamat remarked. ‘I had hoped we might have a bit more time. I’m afraid it’s going to be a race now, Mr Quare.’
Yes, but a race to where?
He could not ask, could only follow as she picked up the pace, pulling him along. The horn continued to blow, further harrying them. Perhaps
it
was the exertion, or just the fading effects of Tiamat’s kiss, but Quare’s head was soon buzzing, and his stump was throbbing so painfully with each step that he could barely think at all … though he did wonder why it was that a dragon would be running from anything, and why Tiamat, who plainly possessed more than ordinary abilities, did not simply whisk them away through the Otherwhere as Longinus would surely have done.
After a while, Quare noticed a yellowish glow in front of them; it was hard to say just how far away it was, but it seemed to be growing brighter. Tiamat slowed, then halted. ‘Just a little farther, Mr Quare. Can you manage it?’
He nodded, though in fact he was anything but certain of how much longer he could stay on his feet.
‘You have suffered much,’ she said now, and he could feel her gaze upon him though shadows hid her features. ‘Much has been asked of you. Little has been offered in return. That is about to change.’
He heard her take a breath as if about to say more, but instead he felt the soft pressure of her lips on his own again. This time there was no cooling effect, no ebbing of his fever, but there was or anyway seemed to be magic of another sort, for his heart swelled with courage, and he felt himself ready to do anything she asked of him, and more. Though perhaps that was not magic at all. Or if it was, only magic of a most ordinary kind.
She pulled away. ‘They are behind us. We must hurry.’
Quare glanced back and, indeed, could see faint glimmers dancing in the dark.
‘Ahead lies an ancient structure,’ she informed him matter-of-factly. ‘As soon as you can, run to the centre of it.’
‘And what of you?’ he asked – for he found that her kiss had unlocked his tongue.
‘I will join you when I can.’
‘If there is fighting to be done—’
‘I will do it. You are not fit. Nor do you have a weapon. Trust me, Mr Quare.’
‘I do,’ he said and meant it.
She did not reply but was already pulling him onwards. Soon enough
he
could see that the light was coming from around a corner. Tiamat did not pause but broke into a loping run, leaving Quare to follow as best he could.
When he came around the corner, he stopped in astonishment. He stood at the entrance to a huge cavern – the largest by far that he had seen in his time underground. The floor and walls – and, as far as he could make out, the ceiling, too – were blanketed in mushrooms that emitted the yellowish glow he had noted earlier. A constant bright haze of incandescent spores drizzled down from the ceiling. It took him a moment to grow accustomed to it, as if he had emerged blinking into the light of day. But once his vision had adjusted, his gaze was drawn to the centre of the cavern, where stood a circle of dark stones such as were popularly believed to have been deposited upon the plains of England and Scotland by giants or fairies or druids in bygone days. One such site – the Nine Stones – was located on the outskirts of Dorchester, and as an apprentice Quare had sometimes ventured there to study his books and dream of clockworks and more than clockworks: of ages past, when magic had suffused the land, and of ages yet to come, when a science more wondrous would hold sway. But those had been small and stunted stones, lichen-covered, precariously tilted, two or three even toppled into the grass, so that the effect had been rather like a cemetery gone to seed. Not so here.
These stones, half again as tall as a man, stood straight and true, as if they had been erected yesterday. There were twelve of them, irregular in shape but evenly spaced, forming a circle that must have been at least fifteen yards in diameter. They had been polished to an extraordinary shine, like obsidian; yet they did not seem to reflect the light of the mushrooms so much as swallow it, giving them the look of empty, gaping holes, doorways cut into the air. There was something familiar about the shapes of the stones, but he could not quite bring it to mind.
What held Quare frozen in place despite Tiamat’s clear instructions to make for the centre of this strange and imposing edifice was less the shock of coming upon such a thing deep below the metropolis of London than the sight of her at work amidst the mushrooms, single-handedly fighting what appeared to be at least a dozen robed figures. They looked like monks in heavy brown cassocks but moved more like
soldiers
… or, rather, like seasoned regulators: men trained to fight and to kill with brutal economy and grace. Yet they might have been blind bumblers compared with the grey-clad demon who moved among them like a tiger – or, he thought, like a dragon.
He had never seen such fighting skill. He had never imagined it. Even Longinus would have stood no chance against her – and he was by far the best swordsman Quare had ever faced. She fought with a peculiar short sword in one hand and a long dagger in the other. The two weapons wove about her in a blur that no assailing blade or whip – for the men fought with both swords and braided ropes worn about their waists like cinctures – could penetrate. Yet notwithstanding the completeness of her defence, she somehow found or made opportunities to go on the attack. And in this she was more impressive still, as the blood of her enemies attested. She was in constant motion, her entire body a weapon: darting, tumbling, leaping, at times seeming almost to fly. Her speed was uncanny; there were moments it seemed that her opponents were standing still. This was death-dealing brought to the highest level of art … or even beyond art, to a kind of mechanized perfection. It was beautiful and terrible to watch. Her brown-robed adversaries were brave: they did not cry out, did not make any sound at all, as if they had taken vows of silence. They continued to fight even after it must have been plain to them that they stood no chance. Quare could not help but pity them. Yet he did not tear his eyes away as they fell like stalks of wheat before a merciless scythe.
So engrossed was he in this consummate display of killing craft that he forgot about the pursuing Morecockneyans until a crossbow bolt clattered off the wall beside him. Looking back, he saw a group of palely glowing men charging up the passage – which, luckily for him, was so narrow as to compel them to come in single file. That was why he had faced only a single bolt rather than half a dozen. But his pursuers would soon have ample room to spread out and fire upon him without fear of shooting each other. Cursing under his breath, he turned and ran into the cavern, making for the circle of stones.
It was not easy to run through the mushrooms; his boots crushed them into a slick paste that made every step perilous. His progress consisted more of slipping and sliding than it did of running. But he
managed
– just – to keep his feet. The constant rain of glowing spores from above, added to those stirred up by his passage, had soon turned his grey clothing into a suit of light. He could not help breathing the spores in; their brightness seemed to concentrate inside him, coming together into a single point of light behind his breast, hot and focused as a small sun, and it occurred to him that he might be turning into a spore himself and would soon float up from the ground. But then he thought that must be the influence of his fever rather than any transformation effected by the spores.
As he ran, too intent on keeping his balance to spare a backward glance for his pursuers, one of the remaining brown-robed men noticed him and broke away from Tiamat, angling towards him through the field of mushrooms. He was not glowing as Quare and Tiamat were; the brown robes, it seemed, were proof against the shining of the spores, which winked out like sparks settling on water upon alighting there. Quare did not think he would reach the stone circle before the man was upon him, and in any case he had no reason to believe the monument would afford him any protection from attack. Tiamat had told him that she had come this way to find him; he wondered how – assuming that were true – she had managed to avoid these silent, stalwart defenders. It was beginning to look as though he would not have the opportunity to ask her, however, for the man was close enough now that Quare could make out his features: a bulbous nose, dark eyes that regarded him with fierce, unreasoning hatred, lips bared in a soundless howl, displaying teeth filed to sharp points and an empty space where a tongue should have been. The man had lost his sword in the fight with Tiamat but was whipping his cincture in a wicked circle over his head as he came on; the thick hempen rope, Quare saw now, had an iron clasp at the end. It filled the air with a low, ominous thrumming that he felt in the very marrow of his bones.