The Purple Emperor

Comma said, 'Mother's been locked up again?' He looked, if anything, relieved.

'What happened?' Henry asked.

'I'm not sure.' Flapwazzle had slid down from Henry now and was talking to them from the floor. 'Somebody said the order came from Cossus Cossus, Lord Hairstreak's Gatekeeper.'

Pyrgus looked at Blue. 'Hairstreak must have found her more trouble than she was worth.'

'She's mad. She's been mad for years. You can't have a mad woman on the loose, giving orders. I can't believe Comma let her out in the first place,' Blue said.

'She's not mad,' Comma said. 'You've always had it in for her.' He sounded sulky, but not altogether convinced.

'Well,' Pyrgus said, 'one less thing to worry about.'

'What happened, Flapwazzle?' Henry asked quickly. 'When you went into the palace to look for me?'

'The Sisters of the Silk Guild told me what had happened to you. I knew you wouldn't find the Purple Emperor in the palace -'

'How did you know?' Pyrgus interrupted Flapwazzle.

'Overheard some guards talking. They'd taken the Emperor to Hairstreak's mansion. I figured you'd find out eventually, so I came here.'

'Yes, but how did you know we were in the maze?'

'I didn't,' Flapwazzle said. 'I got lost and ended up in the ventilation ducts. I was trying to back out again when I saw you on one of the view screens.'

Henry couldn't stop grinning. 'That was clever of you, Flapwazzle.'

'Anyway,' Flapwazzle said, 'once I got here and figured out the controls, I tracked you and switched off traps wherever I could.'

Nymph said, 'I don't suppose you know a way out, do you, Flapwazzle?'

And Flapwazzle said, 'Oh, yes – that door there.'

CHAPTER NINETY TWO

'Now we're quits,' said Beleth.

Brimstone watched the marching soldiers disappear ten abreast through the gigantic portal. This was no commando raid: it was a full-scale demonic invasion. It occurred to him he needed to get back to the Realm as quickly as possible. Apart from anything else, he wanted to watch the fun.

'Can I go now?' he asked Beleth sharply.

Beleth stretched and metamorphosed into his huge, red, muscular, horned form. Presumably he planned to join the fun himself. 'Your work for me is done. Go!'

'Use that?' Brimstone asked, nodding towards the portal.

'If you wish.'

Brimstone gathered his belongings and joined the next rank of marching soldiers. As he reached the portal, he wondered suddenly where it opened in the Faerie Realm.

'This is what I call style,' said Fogarty, grinning like a ten-year-old. He was being carried in a sedan chair by two burly Forest Faeries, who must have been using spell assistance to judge from the cracking pace they kept up.

The entire forest floor throbbed beneath the feet of Forest Faerie, thousands upon thousands of them dressed in military green. Every face seemed to hold a look of calm determination. 'I think it's more of an extermination,' Fogarty said.

'A lot of troops… ' Madame Cardui said, looking around again.

'I think,' said Fogarty, 'the idea is to raze Hairstreak's mansion to the ground.'

'Yes, I know. He has guards, of course, but I'm not sure I understand why we need quite so many soldiers. We must outnumber his people several hundred to one.'

Fogarty wrinkled his nose. 'As I understand it, Queen Cleo wants to strike hard and fast, win in as short a time as possible. Then the mansion is demolished brick by brick – she can't burn it down because of the trees – demolished, maybe even buried. Now you see it, now you don't. After that her people melt back into the trees, leaving behind a mystery. She's hoping a disappearing mansion will discourage anybody else from building in her forest.'

'Mmm,' said Madame Cardui. 'Perhaps.'

Fogarty glanced at her sideways. 'What's worrying you, Cynthia?'

'Oh, I'm not exactly worried, deeah. Perhaps… a little concerned. It's just that in my experience, once one sets a force this size marching, one always finds some reason to keep it going.'

Fogarty peered through the trees ahead. 'Well, we'll soon find out,' he said. 'I think we're nearly at the mansion now.'

Colias, the anaesthetic wizard, dropped two cones and broke a third before he managed the spell. God alone knew what was wrong with the man. Anaesthetics weren't exactly rocket science. You cracked a cone -the damn things were self-starting – and aimed it in the right direction. That was it. A trained monkey could do it.

Chalkhill watched the sparkling cloud wind sinuously across the room to descend first upon the Purple Emperor, then on himself. He sighed deeply as the tiny pinpricks of light penetrated his body. In a moment the anaesthetic would kick in, carrying him out of his body on clouds of bliss while the surgery was carried out. Soon it would all be over. He'd be rid of the garrulous Cyril -

'This will kill you, mark my words,' Cyril murmured, but without much force or conviction.

– and Hairstreak would once again be in his debt. There were worse places to be in. Much worse. He waited.

He was still in his body.

He waited.

Still no clouds of bliss. But of course time always crawled when you were in a state of anticipation.

He waited.

An errant thought occurred to him. That old idiot, who ruined three spell cones before he even managed to crack one, had probably made the cones in the first place.

'That should do,' said Hairstreak abruptly. He nodded to Mountain Clouded Yellow. 'You can start the operation now.'

Chalkhill pinched himself. It hurt like hell. He tried to sit up, but the straps restrained him easily. He tried to shout, to warn the surgeon he was nowhere nearly ready, but a sunburst of fear caused the words to gurgle in his throat.

The psychic surgeon, Mountain Clouded Yellow, moved with terrifying speed to plunge his hands into the abdomen of the Purple Emperor and rip the bloody opening that would become the new home of the wyrm.

The Purple Emperor screamed.

They were in the vast natural cavern, but outside the obsidian maze. Pyrgus looked around him with a curious tightness in his stomach. Above him, huge rafts, hung by sensor technology, floated below the ceiling, each accessed by a branching suspensor shaft. One of them supported a vast room with transparent walls: obviously an observation chamber where spectators could watch death stalk the maze. Beside it -

'There's something moving up there,' Blue said quietly.

Pyrgus suddenly realised how vulnerable they were. When the party emerged there had been a general flood of relief that they had escaped from the obsidian maze at last, but now they were exposed – a small, tightly-bunched group on the featureless sweep of the cavern floor. If they were discovered, Hairstreak's men could pick them off in minutes.

Nymph must have had the same thought, for she said, 'Crown Prince, we need cover.'

Pyrgus said, 'We need to get out of here. Hairstreak won't be holding my father underground. It's dangerous to talk to -' He stopped abruptly, licked his lips.

'Can any of you see a way out?'

'I think that's a staircase over there,' Henry said.

He was right. 'Keep low and keep moving!' Pyrgus said. 'Henry, grab Comma's hand. All of you – quietly as possible.'

As a party they made a run for the cut-stone staircase. They had almost reached it when a bloodcurdling scream echoed through the cavern.

'That's Daddy!' Blue exclaimed at once.

CHAPTER NINETY THREE

It was hideously dangerous, but they crowded into the suspensor shaft. (Henry spotted the entrance to that one as welclass="underline" Henry was getting very good at spotting things.) Standard suspensor spells were set to lift a maximum of three people with a ten per cent margin of error, besides which there was the probability of meeting Hairstreak's guards either in the shaft itself or when they stepped out.