‘Are you still toying with her?’
Lacrimosa was walking towards them on the air. Agnes saw the other vampires behind her.
‘Bite her or let her go,’ the girl went on. ‘Good grief, she’s so blobby. Come on, Father wants you. They’re heading for our castle. Isn’t that just too stupid?’
‘This is my affair, Lacci,’ said Vlad.
‘Every boy should have a hobby, but . . . really,’ said Lacrimosa, rolling her black-rimmed eyes.
Vlad grinned at Agnes.
‘Come with us,’ he said.
Granny did say you need to be with the others, Perdita pointed out.
‘Yes, but how will I find them when we’re there?’ said Agnes aloud.
‘Oh, we’ll find them,’ said Vlad.
‘I meant-‘
‘Do come. We don’t intend to hurt your friends-‘
‘Much,’ said Lacrimosa.
‘Or . . . we could leave you here,’ said Vlad, smiling.
Agnes looked around. They had touched down on the mountain peak, above the clouds. She felt warm and light, which was wrong. Even on a broomstick she’d never felt like this, she’d always been aware of gravity sucking her down, but with the vampire holding her arm every part of her felt that it could float for ever.
Besides, if she didn’t go with them it was going to be either a very long or an extremely short journey down to the ground.
Besides, she would find the other two, and you couldn’t do that when you were dying in some crevasse somewhere.
Besides, even if he did have small fangs and a terrible taste in waistcoats, Vlad actually seemed attracted to her. It wasn’t even as if she had a very interesting neck.
She made up both minds.
‘If you attached a piece of string to her I suppose we could tow her like some sort of balloon,’ said Lacrimosa.
Besides, there was always the chance that, at some point, she might find herself in a room with Lacrimosa. When that happened, she wouldn’t
need garlic, or a stake, or an axe. Just a little talk about people who were too unpleasant, too malicious, too thin. Just five minutes alone.
And perhaps a pin, said Perdita.
Under the rabbit hole, down below the bank, was a wide, low-roofed chamber. Tree roots wound among the stones in the wall.
There were plenty of such things around Lancre. The kingdom had been there many years, ever since the ice withdrew. Tribes had pillaged, tilled, built and died. The clay walls and reed thatch of the living houses had long since rotted and been lost but, down under the moundy banks, the abodes of the dead survived. No one knew now who’d been buried there. Occasionally the spoil heap outside a badger set would reveal a piece of bone or a scrap of corroded armour. The Lancrastians didn’t go digging themselves, reckoning in their uncomplicated country way that it was bad luck to have your head torn off by a vengeful underground spirit.
One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight and placed a sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would be gone and you’d never see your horse again, either . . .
Down on the earth floor under the bank a fire was burning darkly, filling the barrow with smoke which exited through various hidden crannies.
There was a pear-shaped rock beside it.
Verence tried to sit up, but his body didn’t want to obey.
‘Dinna scanna’ whista,’ said the rock.
It unfolded its legs. It was, he realized, a woman, or at least a female, blue like the other pixies but at least a foot high and so fat that it was almost spherical. It looked exactly like the little figurines back in the days of ice and mammoths, when what men really looked for in a woman was quantity. For the sake of modesty, or merely to mark the equator, it wore what Verence could only think of as a tutu. The whole effect reminded him of a spinning top he’d had when he was a child.
‘The Kelda says,’ said a cracked voice by his ear, ‘that ye . . . must get . . . ready.’
Verence turned his head the other way and tried to focus on a small wizened pixie right in front of his nose. Its skin was faded. It had a long white beard. It walked with two sticks.
‘Ready? For what?’
‘Good.’ The old pixie banged its sticks on the ground. ‘Craik’n shaden ach, Feegle!’
The blue men rushed at Verence from the shadows. Hundreds of hands grabbed him. Their bodies formed a human pyramid, pulling him upright against the wall. Some clung to the tree roots that looped across the ceiling, tugging on his nightshirt to keep him vertical.
A crowd of others ran across the floor with a full-sized crossbow and propped it on a stone close to him.
‘Er . . . I say. . .’ Verence murmured.
The Kelda waddled into the shadows and returned with her pudgy fists clenched. She went to the fire and held them over the flames.
‘Yin!’ said the old pixie.
‘I say, that’s aimed right at my-‘
‘Yin!’ shouted the Nac mac Feegle.
‘. . . ton!’
‘Ton!’
‘Um, it’s, er, right. . .’
‘Tetra!’
The Kelda dropped something on the fire. A white flame roared up, etching the room in black and white. Verence blinked.
When he managed to see again there was a crossbow bolt sticking in the wall just by his ear.
The Kelda growled some order, while white light still danced around the walls. The bearded pixie rattled his sticks again.
‘Now ye must walk awa’. Noo!’
The Feegle let Verence go. He took a few tottering steps and collapsed on the floor, but the pixies weren’t watching him.
He looked up.
His shadow twisted on the wall where it had been pinned. It writhed for a moment, trying to clutch at the arrow with insubstantial hands, and then faded.
Verence raised his hand. There seemed to be a shadow there, too, but at least this one looked as if it was the regular kind.
The old pixie hobbled over to him.
‘All fine now,’ he said.
‘You shot my shadow?’ said Verence.
‘Aye, ye could call it a shade,’ said the pixie. ‘It’s the ‘fluence they put on ye. But ye’ll be up and aboot in no time.’
‘A boot?’
‘Aboot the place,’ said the pixie evenly. ‘All hail, your kingy. I’m Big Aggie’s Man. Ye’d call me the prime minister, I’m hazardin’. Will ye no’ have a huge dram and a burned bannock while yer waitin’?’
Verence rubbed his face. He did feel better already. The fog was drifting away.
‘How can I ever repay you?’ he said.
The pixie’s eyes gleamed happily.
‘Oh, there’s a wee bitty thing the carlin’ Ogg said you could be givin’ us, hardly important at all,’ he said.
‘Anything,’ said Verence.
A couple of pixies came up staggering under a rolled-up parchment, which was unfolded in front of Verence. The old pixie was suddenly holding a quill pen.
‘It’s called a signature,’ he said, as Verence stared at the tiny handwriting. ‘An’ make sure ye initial all the subclauses and codicils. We of the Nac mac Feegle are a simple folk,’ he added, ‘but we write verra comp-lic-ated documents.’
Mightily oats blinked at Granny over the top of his praying hands. She saw his gaze slide sideways to the axe, and then back to her.
‘You wouldn’t reach it in time,’ said Granny, without moving. ‘Should’ve got hold of it already if you were goin’ to use it. Prayer’s all very well. I can see where it can help you get your mind right. But an axe is an axe no matter what you believes.’
Oats relaxed a little. He’d expected a leap for the throat.
‘If Hodgesaargh’s made any tea, I’m parched,’ said Granny. She leaned against the anvil, panting. Out of the corner of her eye she saw his hand move slowly.
‘I’ll get- I’ll ask- I’ll-‘
‘Man with his head screwed on properly, that falconer. A biscuit wouldn’t come amiss.’
Oats’s hand reached the axe handle.
‘Still not quick enough,’ said Granny. ‘Keep hold of it, though. Axe first, pray later. You look like a priest. What’s your god?’
‘Er . . . Om.’
‘That a he god or a she god?’
‘A he. Yes. A he. Definitely a he.’ It was one thing the Church hadn’t schismed over, strangely. ‘Er. . . you don’t mind, do you?’
‘Why should I mind?’
‘Well . . . your colleagues keep telling me the Omnians used to burn witches. . .’
‘They never did,’ said Granny.
‘I’m afraid I have to admit that the records show-‘
‘They never burned witches,’ said Granny. ‘Probably they burned some old ladies who spoke up or couldn’t run away. I wouldn’t look for witches bein’ burned,’ she added, shifting position. ‘I might look for witches doin’ the burning, though. We ain’t all nice.’