“What…precisely, where you looking for?” I said.
“I was interested in your family’s past dealings with the elves,” the Blue Fairy said immediately. “I don’t really know much about Daddy’s side of the family. Full blood elves don’t talk to half-breeds. Our very existence is taboo to them. But seeing you here, Eddie, among your own kind, made me sort of curious about mine. You know your roots, who and what you came from. I never have.”
I would have believed anyone else, but this was the Blue Fairy, so …
“Next time, ask permission first,” I said. “How did you get in here, anyway? The shields I had put in place around the portrait should have eaten you alive.”
“Oh please,” said the Blue Fairy, with an airy wave of one slender hand. “I am a professional, after all. I’ve been getting in and out of better-guarded places than this since before you were born.” And then he hesitated, and looked at me oddly. “I couldn’t help overhearing the librarian’s fascinating discourse on the Kandarians… It seems to me that I read something about them, and their connection with the elves. The Fae Court was already ancient when the Kandarians began building their very unpleasant empire, and it is said…that the elves introduced the Kandarians to the Loathly Ones, as a way of destroying them. Beware of elves, Eddie, they always have a hidden agenda.”
He turned and walked away. I watched him go, and wondered whether he’d been trying to tell me, in his own indirect way, something very important about himself.
I left the old library with a lot on my mind. I’d learned a lot of important things, most of which horrified me, all of which made me just that much more determined to go ahead with my secret plan. If I was going to have to fight a war against Hungry Gods, with all of reality at stake, I wanted some seriously heavy backup. First, I needed a place where no one would bother me, where I could use Merlin’s Glass in a way I was sure absolutely no one in the family would approve of. So I left the Hall and went to the old chapel, tucked away around the side of the house. Jacob’s old haunt, before I brought him back into the family. The chapel had been officially off limits to the whole family for centuries, because Jacob was there, and while he might have left the chapel, no one had got around to reversing the ban.
I approached the chapel cautiously, but the thick mat of ivy half covering the heavy wooden door didn’t even twitch. While Jacob was in residence, the ivy had acted as his early warning system, to ensure he remained undisturbed…but now he was gone, and the ivy was just ivy. The door was stuck half open, as always, and I had to put my shoulder to the heavy wood to shift it. The door scraped loudly across the bare stone floor, raising acrid clouds of dust. I coughed a few times, and called out Jacob’s name. I still half hoped…but there was no reply.
Jacob was gone.
The pews were still stacked up against the far wall, shrouded in dusty cobwebs. The huge black leather reclining chair still stood in front of the old-fashioned television set. It was only too easy to remember Jacob, slouched at his ease in the chair, watching the memories of old television programmes on a set with no working bits in it. The old refrigerator still stood beside the chair, but when I opened it, it was empty. I closed the door and sat down on the chair. The old leather creaked mournfully under my weight.
I wished Jacob were still around. I could always talk to him. And, just maybe, he would have been the only one I trusted enough to talk me out of what I intended to do. I wasn’t up to running a war. I didn’t have the experience. The Nazca Plain nest had proved that. I was damned if I’d see any more of my family killed because of me. I needed expert help and support, from real warriors and tacticians, to help me plan the battles in the war that was coming. And since it didn’t seem likely that I’d find such experts here in the present, I’d just have to look for them in the past, and the future.
The Armourer had forbidden me to do that. But I never was any good at listening to what my family told me.
I took out Merlin’s Glass and just looked at it for a while, turning it over and over in my hands. I wasn’t blind to the risks of what I was planning. But the family had to be protected. I shook the mirror out to full size, and it hung before me on the air, its surface a shimmering blank.
“Open yourself to the past,” I said firmly. “And find me the best warrior, the best planner, to help me in the war that’s coming. Find me a man good and true; someone I can trust. Find me the one perfect individual, to do what’s needed.”
The mirror snapped into sharp focus, showing me a clear image of… Jacob Drood. At first I thought the mirror had misunderstood me, and just located the ghost of Jacob because he was most on my mind. But the more I looked at the image, the clearer it became that this wasn’t any ghost. This was the real Jacob, the living man… from long, long ago. He looked so much younger, and… less complicated. As I watched, the image burst into movement, and I was looking through a window into the past, as the living Jacob chased a giggling young woman around the chapel. Grinning cheerfully, he pursued her in and out of the properly positioned pews, the girl staying just enough ahead to encourage him. Their clothing suggested late eighteenth century, though I was never very good on dates and history.
I must have made some kind of noise, because they both stopped what they were doing and looked sharply in my direction. They didn’t cry out, or seem particularly scared or startled; they were Droods, after all. I could see the gold collars around their throats.
Still, Jacob moved quickly to put himself between the young woman and the man staring at them through a hole in midair. I held up my hands to show they were empty, and gave them my most reassuring smile.
“It’s all right, Jacob,” I said quickly. “It’s all right; I’m family. I’m Edwin Drood, speaking to you from the future. The twenty-first century, to be exact. The family has need of you, Jacob.”
“If thou be family, show me thy torc,” said Jacob.
I pulled open my shirt to show him the collar around my neck. Jacob raised an eyebrow.
“A silver torc, and not gold. Has the family’s mettle become so debased, in your future time?”
“There have been some changes,” I said. “But the family goes on. You’d still recognise who we are, and what we do. The world still needs protecting, from many dangers.”
Jacob nodded slowly, then turned the young woman around, smacked her firmly on the bottom, and urged her towards the chapel door. “Get thee gone, girl. This is man’s business.”
She giggled, gave him one last saucy wink, and trotted quite happily out of the chapel. I made a mental note to tell this Jacob not to try that in my time.
“Best bit of bum in the Hall,” Jacob said cheerfully.
“That may be,” I said, “But…why the chapel?”
“Because the family’s chased me out of everywhere else,” said Jacob. “It seems the morals of this age are changing, and fun is out of fashion.” Jacob looked at me shrewdly. “From the future, you say… Might I inquire how it is that thou art here, speaking with me?”
“Merlin’s Glass,” I said, and Jacob nodded immediately.
“I had thought that devious and dangerous device long lost, and rightly so. Thy need must be desperate indeed, to put faith in such a thing.” Jacob regarded me thoughtfully. “How is it that a man of such future times recognises my face, and hails me by name? Am I to become famous, and a legend in the family?”
“Sort of,” I said. “I need you to come to me, Jacob, into the future, to help the family. Will you come?”
“Time travel is forbidden, without the express order of the Matriarch,” Jacob said slowly. “But tell me, young sir, how goes the world in your time? What new wonders and marvels?”