Endless Knot, Chapter 4

[minutia_r]

Endless Knot

Chapter 4: Conrad

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 | Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7

Fandom: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci

Pairings: Henrietta/Bernard, Conrad/Christopher

Rating: PG-13

Word count: 3200

Summary: "We won't be leaving them," said Christopher, "since they aren't exactly here. Right now I'm just trying to get you home in one piece."

"B-but that's . . . w-w-wrong," said Flavian. "I w-work for the D-d-department. When y-you're the n-next Ch-ch-chrest-t-tomanci," he finally got out, and Christopher winced at Flavian's favorite phrase, "it'll be your j-j-job . . . to risk p-people like m-me . . . f-for people like th-th-them."

Christopher and the young enchanters go to the circus. Conrad and Flavian go for a walk in the forest. Things go very wrong.

Thanks to: the excellent morganna_le.

Christopher leaned into one of the great iron doors, and pushed. The painted lines darted away from his shoulder where it touched them, but kept their human shapes. There was the girl we'd first seen, in her sailor dress and broad straw hat; another girl, tall, pale, and pudgy; and three small boys. They twisted away from Christopher and shrieked. The door stayed where it was—a crack open, and no more. "It's going to take all of us, I think," he said.

Flavian had propped himself against the lintel, shaking. He was putting his back and shoulders into each breath, but he couldn't seem to get enough air. "Ch-ch-christopher," he panted, "we c-c-can't . . . l-leave them."

At first I thought his wits were wandering, and then I realized he meant the children in the door.

"We won't be leaving them," said Christopher, "since they aren't exactly here. Right now I'm just trying to get you home in one piece."

"B-but that's . . . w-w-wrong," said Flavian. "I w-work for the D-d-department. When y-you're the n-next Ch-ch-chrest-t-tomanci," he finally got out, and Christopher winced at Flavian's favorite phrase, "it'll be your j-j-job . . . to risk p-people like m-me . . . f-for people like th-th-them."

It was appalling logic. "Grant?" said Christopher, in a smaller voice than I'd ever heard him use.

I looked at Flavian, bowed over and panting and blue around the mouth. I looked at the twisting figures in the door, all calling at the top of their voices for Master Dodd. I could barely feel my toes, and my shoulder was stiff where the firebird had caught it, and the calls echoing off the cliffs sent chills down my spine. I won't lie—I wanted to go home. I looked at Christopher. "Speaking as the future representative of Chrestomanci in Series Seven," I said, "I'm going to have to agree with Flavian."

Christopher shut his eyes for a moment. I felt rather as though I'd hit him. I knew that what he'd wanted to hear was save me, Christopher—but what could I do?

"Well," said Christopher. "Quickly, Conrad—Fire, water, earth, or air?"

He'd lost me again, but I felt the wind blow past my ears and said, "Er—air."

"Flavian?" said Christopher.

"Earth," said Flavian, promptly and without stuttering.

"Of course," said Christopher. He took the weaving out of his pocket again, tugged at it, and handed me a green string. It disappeared when I took it, and I felt very peculiar; I knew some magic had happened, but I couldn't say what. He handed Flavian a yellow string. I could taste the magic that time. It tasted of dirt and exactly right for Flavian. I could see why he hadn't hesitated, and why Christopher had said of course. "Now," said Christopher. "If you could find your places in the pattern."

The green lines on the door were suddenly fascinating the way the weaving I'd held had been earlier. I tried to shy away from them, but it was hard, and Christopher and Flavian were fading into the door somehow and I didn't want to be left behind. So I let my mind go. There was a confusion of color and a sick, dizzy feeling in my stomach, and then we were somewhere else.

I say somewhere, but there were no features to the landscape, only lights too bright to look at, and gray smoke in the middle distance. Flavian stood straight and didn't tremble, which added to the feeling that none of this was exactly real. If I squinted, I thought I could see three Christophers, all occupying the same space. I didn't quite like to do that.

Real or not, I shrank closer to Christopher and Flavian as a group of demons came circling around us. One was pounding out an insistent beat on a drum, two swung jangling bells, and a fourth blew a wailing blast on an instrument that looked like it might have been made from a long bone of some animal. The fifth was a woman-thing the size of a house, grinning with far too many teeth, and twirling a noose that made the air sing.

"What are you doing here, little prey?" she hissed.

"Er," said Christopher. "I wonder if you'd be good enough to tell me where here is? I'm not sure I'll be able to answer your question otherwise, you see."

"This is the border realm, the southern gateway of Master Dodd's hunting grounds, and I am its guardian, and you should not be here," said the demon. "You should have stayed to be caught by Master Dodd. He would not have killed you, but we will."

"I hardly think that's necessary," said Christopher. "We're perfectly willing to leave, once we've found who we're looking for."

The guardian twirled her noose. The smaller demons circled, still making a racket. None of them made a move towards us. It wasn't the flashiest piece of magic I'd ever seen Christopher do, but it was one of the strongest—as long as he was talking, she'd keep talking too.

"It is too late for that," the guardian hissed.

Knowing about Christopher's spell made me a little calmer, but I still kept a nervous eye on that noose as it swished back and forth. It looked like nothing so much as a plait of hair. And the flaming halo around her head might almost have been a broad straw hat . . . "Christopher," I whispered, "it's her. The girl in the door, in the sailor dress."

Well, I tried to whisper. I wasn't quite in my usual body, and I misjudged the volume. The guardian turned towards me, and the delicate structure of Christopher's magic crumbled. The demons brandished their instruments and started forward. "Enough talking!" the guardian shrieked, sounding rather like my sister when I interrupted her studying for exams. "Slay!"

She threw her noose at Christopher. I made a grab for it, but I was too slow. The two demons with bells leapt at Flavian. The one with the bone trumpet swung it at me. I staggered backwards. But as it whistled past my head I saw he was just doing it for the look of the thing, and hadn't meant to hit me at all.

"Who am I really?" he whispered. "Tell me!"

His demonic appearance wasn't anything as simple as an illusion, but witch sight is one of the things I'm good at. "You've recently lost a tooth, a bottom front one," I said. "You've got lots of freckles. Your hair could use a cut. Does that help at all?"

He dropped his bone trumpet and screwed up his face. "I want to go home!" he wailed.

"Don't be so feeble, Robin!" snapped the guardian. She was a big sister.

"I don't see what's feeble about refusing to stay tamely where Master Dodd put you," said Christopher. I hadn't seen what had happened between him and the guardian, but he was holding his right arm carefully, close to his body. "Who else wants to go home?"

"We can't," said the demon with the drum. She was a plump pale girl, about my age, making her the oldest of the demon children there. "The lights keep us in. They sting."

"They might sting," said Flavian. He was straightening up and brushing himself off; he looked all right. "But they won't keep you in, if you're not afraid. Do you remember how you came to be here, the colors? The same color will get you out."

"Right," said Christopher. "Just look at your color, and keep up with us."

I looked at the green light. It made my eyes water. All around me, the demon children—who were looking less like demons and more like children all the time—shuffled and winced and forced themselves to look at the lights too. They were the same patterns of color I'd seen on the door, seen from the inside, repulsive rather than attractive. But I was nearly used to it by now, and once I stopped being bothered by the timeless stretched-out strings of people and the multiplicity of Christopher, I saw that he was actually navigating. I didn't know how he could do it, but I could tell we were somehow heading across rather than out.

We ended in a place that looked a lot like the border realm we'd just left, and were surrounded by demons again. The house-sized one with a pointed, hooked stick told us he was the guardian of the western gateway. The former guardian of the southern gateway twirled her noose at him—which still buzzed with magic, although she was just a small girl now—but Christopher managed to recall them to themselves and persuade them to come with us without any fighting this time. The same thing happened in the northern border realm.

Christopher steered us towards the eastern door, but he couldn't get into it—that was the silver one, I remembered. The rest of us tumbled into the border realm anyhow. I talked quickly and Flavian stopped the former guardian of the southern gateway from strangling anyone.

And presently Christopher, Flavian, twenty children holding a collection of grisly magical weapons and instruments, and I were out in the cold and the real, in front of a pair of doors set into a mountain face. Flavian was shaking and panting and blue again, now he was back in his body, and Christopher still held his arm awkwardly from the hurt he'd taken in the border realms. It hardly seemed fair, but magic often isn't.

The doors were shining and golden, without a speck of paint or color on them, and unlike the iron doors these were firmly shut. I had a nasty suspicion about that.

"Now, everyone together," said Christopher, "push."

And we pushed. Those of us who could, put magic into it. But the doors didn't move.

"No use," I said. One of the girls from the eastern border realm started to cry. I didn't know what to say. I'd said we'd get her home, but I'd lied. "Henrietta may have opened the doors, but they're shut now."

"It s-s-stands t-to . . . r-r-reason," Flavian panted, "w-w-without th-their g-g-guardians."

"Does it," said Christopher. His voice was colder than the wind blowing past us, and that was cold. "If I'm ever the next Chrestomanci, Flavian, it will be your job to give me accurate information. It's your job now, come to that. I can't imagine how you neglected to mention this possibility."

Flavian just blinked at him miserably, and I—well, I lost it.

"Leave off, Christopher!" I shouted. Anger felt good—miles better than fear and guilt. "Flavian did his best, and he's freezing to death, and he doesn't deserve to be sneered at! Have you done any better? We wouldn't even be here if you hadn't got involved with demons invoking ritual hunts. I'm beginning to think Flavian was right about you, you unfeeling, superior bastard!"

The blank, stunned look that had come over Christopher's face when I started shouting at him had been replaced by something more unnerving. His eyes were shining and a smile was beginning to curl at the edges of his mouth. "Say that again," he said.

I blinked. There were tears freezing my eyelashes together. "You're an unfeeling, superior bastard?" I said.

"No, no," said Christopher impatiently. "Before that."

I thought back on what I'd said, feeling rather sick. "Er . . . we wouldn't even be here if you hadn't got involved with demons invoking ritual hunts?"

"That's it," said Christopher, grinning delightedly. "I'm an idiot, Conrad. Henrietta invoked the hunt, not Master Dodd. We should be hunting them."

"Does it make a difference?" I said.

"It might," said Christopher. He looked at all the formerly demonic children clustered around us. They looked wide-eyed back. We must have been better than a show. "I don't suppose any of you have ever hunted," he said a bit helplessly. When he got nothing but silence and incredulous stares, he sighed. "I never thought I'd say this, but I wish my cousin Francis were here."

"Er." It was the former guardian of the southern gateway's brother, Robin. "Emily and me . . . we help our dad with his liming sometimes."

"Eh?" said Christopher.

"P-p-poaching b-birds," Flavian translated.

The former guardian of the southern gateway—Emily—gave her brother a cuff. "Fathead!" she said. "He could be a policeman or anything!"

Christopher was laughing now, though not in any way that someone who didn't know him could tell. "As it happens, my colleague is employed by the Government in an, er, law-enforcement capacity, but I assure you that that is the sort of crime that doesn't interest him in the least," he said. "Your secret is safe with us. Isn't it, Flavian?"

"Wh-what?" said Flavian. "Oh—y-y-yes, of c-course."

"And," said Christopher more seriously, "I do think your skills are likely to be more useful than my cousin Francis', the twit. In fact, they'll probably make the difference between all of us getting home, versus spending the rest of our existences guarding the gateways of Master Dodd's hunting grounds. You have a very useful cord there, I see. Can you set snares?"

"Yah," Emily acknowledged, proud and suspicious at once.

"Christopher," I said, looking up at the darkening sky, "demons."

"Good," said Christopher. "We're hunting them now, remember? The rest of us will have to distract them and give our friend with the rope a chance to set her snare."

"Distract how?" I said.

"Run," said Christopher.

"Right," I grumbled. "This is very different than being hunted by demons, then." But I hauled Flavian to his feet—because he didn't have the strength left to stand himself—and put my head down, and ran. Christopher and the whole crowd of kids ran too. And it seemed that Emily, in her incarnation as the guardian of the southern gateway, had been telling the truth. Christopher did have to deflect a firebird from swooping down on a small girl who had fallen behind, and dissuade a bear-thing from taking a chunk out of a boy who swung a length of chain at it—but on the whole, the demons weren't trying to kill us. They were herding us. I had to hope they were herding us somewhere we wanted to go, and that this was one of Christopher's clever plans and not one of his stupid ones, because sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, and I had to concentrate on keeping Flavian moving.

We were being driven up a slope, and at the crest of the slope there was a tree—a proper tree, not a gaudy Twelve one, stout and gnarled, greenish-gray trunk and grayish-green needles. At first I thought it was short, but as we got closer I saw that it was just that it was nearly as enormous around as it was up and down. I also saw, out of the corner of my eye, Christopher give a signal to Emily and Robin, and the two of them slip through the closing line of demons.

Another minute, and we were all backed up against the tree, as snake demons writhed around our feet and bear demons prowled beyond them. Firebirds flashed in the sky and the pounding of the demons on flying drums sang like blood in my ears. Something came striding up, big as the mountain we stood on, round as the world, blue as space. Too many arms, too many teeth, too loud, too bright. It could only be Master Dodd.

"Such a chase, as there hasn't been for thousands of years!" It wasn't so much that he spoke, as that the words had always been there—in the air, in the ground, everywhere. "But now it ends."

"Y-yes," said Christopher. Behind me I felt something tighten, and catch, and Robin darted up and handed something to Christopher, wet and blue-back. Christopher put the thing carefully on the ground in front of him, knelt, and produced a penknife—it was Flavian's, I recognized it. I could see the effort he was making, keeping everything still while he worked, keeping himself still, though his body wanted to shake. "Open the doors," he said, "we are coming to make the offering." Then he drove the penknife into the—it must have been a heart—and clear to the ground beneath.

There were whoops and laughter from the kids. "Did you see that?"—"Bang! Gone!"—and, more tentatively, "Where'd they go?"

They hadn't gone anywhere, the demons; they were where they'd always been, inherent in the elements. But now they moved with the wind, with the water, with the slow erosion of the mountain. Christopher had fixed them in place. I guess most of the kids couldn't see them at all.

"What now?" I said. "Back to a door?" Christopher had re-opened the doors, but I didn't think Flavian would be able to do that run again. Neither, by the way Christopher was shaking and struggling to catch his breath, would he. And small kids freeze fast.

Christopher pulled himself to his feet, leaning on the tree. "Th-this is a d-d-d-door," he said. "F-five elements, f-five cardinal d-d-directions. N-north, south, east, w-west—and out. Wh-what do you s-s-see?"

"It's a tree," I said, and it was. But it wasn't just. "It's a cord," and then, "it's a ladder."

"G-g-good," said Christopher. "T-take Flavian and c-c-climb."

I said, "But you—"

"I've g-g-got to make s-sure everyone g-g-goes up," said Christopher. "And y-y-you've got to k-keep seeing a ladder for the r-r-rest of us. You've g-got the c-c-clearest eyes."

It was the same thing that Gabriel had said, right before he whisked me off to Series Twelve. But somehow when Christopher said it, I believed it. "I will," I said.

"G-grant," said Christopher. "W-w-what you s-said—I'm—am I r-r-really—" His voice had gone thick and he was looking somewhere off to my left. I didn't know if it was hypothermia or something else, but it scared me worse than demons.

"Christopher," I said. I put a hand on his shoulder, to steady him, or—I don't know. I could feel his whole body shake. You don't have to do this was what I wanted to say, but it wasn't true. "Be careful."

He looked at me then, seeming startled to find our two faces so close together. Startled, and then desperately intense.

It probably counted as making people notice. I'm sure I heard nervous giggles from the crowd of kids. But he kissed me anyway.

"G-go," he said, and I got an arm around Flavian and hauled. He wasn't shaking anymore, which was a bad sign, I knew. I spared one last backward glance at Christopher, pale and trembling at the foot of the tree, and then I reached for a rung of the ladder just above my head, and started climbing.